Luke 1:1-4

I: — Luke never saw a crowd; he never saw a mob or a group or an audience. Luke never saw a faceless man or woman. He saw only an individual, an individual with a specific affliction or problem or perplexity. Luke saw only a suffering individual whom Jesus Christ graced and whom Luke himself thereafter loved. Luke’s gospel is easily the warmest of the four. He describes people with such realism and yet also with such empathy that our hearts go out to them, even though they lived in so very different a time and place.

Luke was a physician. He used a medical vocabulary instinctively. In the incident where the boy is said to be “thrown down” (English text) by his affliction, the Greek word Luke uses was the current medical term for convulsions. In the incident where the distraught father cries to Jesus, “Look upon my son!”, the word Luke uses for “look upon” is the current medical term used of a physician seeing a patient. Like most physicians Luke was understandably defensive of the medical profession. When the menorrhagic woman approaches Jesus, Matthew and Mark tell us she had exhausted all her savings on physicians but was no better. Dr. Luke tells us the same story, but chooses to omit the part about costly medical treatment that has proved ineffective.

As a travel companion of Paul, Luke got to meet the leaders of the young church: Peter, Barnabas, Stephen , Lydia . But Paul was his special friend, his bosom friend, and to his friend Luke remained undeflectably loyal. How loyal? When Paul was imprisoned in Rome and his execution was imminent, Paul wrote young Timothy, “Luke alone is with me.” He couldn’t have been more loyal. If Luke stood by Paul, a man on death row, then did Luke meet the same violent end as Paul? We don’t know. We shall have to wait until the beloved physician tells us himself — if we’ll even bother to ask such questions on the Great Day.

Luke was a Gentile, the only Gentile writer in the New Testament. There’s nothing in his gospel that a Gentile can’t grasp. He habitually gives Hebrew words in their Greek equivalent so that a Gentile can understand. “Simon the Cananaean” becomes “Simon the Zealot.” Calvary isn’t called by its Hebrew name, ” Golgotha “, but by its Greek name, “Kranion.” (” Golgotha ” and “Kranion” both mean “the place of a skull.”) Luke never uses the Jewish term “Rabbi” of Jesus, but always a Greek term meaning “Master.” In tracing the descent of Jesus he follows it back not to Abraham, the foreparent of Jews (as Matthew does), but to Adam, the foreparent of all humans.

Luke’s writings are the single largest contribution to the New Testament. His written gospel is the longest book in the NT; when we add his second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, we have over one-quarter of the NT. Luke wrote excellent Greek; in fact his Greek is the best in all of scripture.

Luke was well-educated and widely travelled. He is the only gospel-writer to speak of the Sea of Galilee as a “lake”; for Luke had been to the Mediterranean, and he knew that compared to the Mediterranean, Galilee was only a lake!

Plainly it was Luke’s intention to describe in his written gospel God’s activity in the ministry of Jesus, and to describe in the Acts God’s activity in the church. Luke never intended to write about himself. Nevertheless what he wrote about his Lord accidentally tells us much about Luke himself. In learning what it was about Jesus that intrigued Luke, we learn eversomuch about the apostle himself.

II(i) — Think of children, for instance. Luke says more about children than any other gospel writer. He knew how anguished parents are when a child, especially an only child, is gravely ill. Three times he mentions distraught parents who cry, “She’s my only child, and she’s dying!”, or “He’s my only child, and he convulses and foams at the mouth!” When Matthew and Mark speak of the children who are brought to Jesus, they use a Greek word that means a youngster of any age. Luke uses a different word, one that means infant. In Greek, Luke’s word also means unborn child or fetus. It’s the word Luke uses for the infants who are brought to Jesus for blessing and for the unborn John the Baptist who stirred in the womb of Elizabeth when Mary told Elizabeth she was pregnant too. Luke loved children, and “children”, for him, included the not-yet-born. Luke, Gentile though he was, knew that God had said to Jeremiah centuries earlier, “I knew you even before I formed you in the womb; I consecrated you a prophet even before you were born.”

Several times I have been asked to conduct living-room services for a couple that has miscarried. In every case the couple wants — and receives from me — recognition of the fact that what they have just lost isn’t of the same order as resected tonsils or gall bladder or appendix.

Luke’s witness needs to be heard, for I think there is less room than ever for children in our society. Whereas Israel regarded childlessness as the greatest misfortune that could befall anyone (worse even than leprosy or blindness), many couples today elect never to have children. They tell us they don’t need children to be “complete” themselves. (Did anyone ever say they did?) They tell us too that children interfere with career plans, travel plans, research plans, financial plans, cultural plans. I think that a society that has little room for children finally has little room for life. The Hebrew greeting, “le chaim, to life”, is finally impossible unless we are also saying, “to children”. No society can finally be life-affirming and child-denying at the same time.

(ii) Luke noted not only our Lord’s love of children; he noted as well our Lord’s love of misfits, outcasts, submerged citizens, losers, call them what you will. Like his master Luke too loved the non-winners in the race to the top, the losers in the games so many of us play so well.

This is why Luke relates the Master’s parable of the two men who go to the temple to pray. One man glories in his virtue. He doesn’t merely appear virtuous; he is virtuous. When he thanks God that he’s “not like other men” he’s telling the truth: he isn’t like other men. He’s devout, he tithes, he keeps his sex-life squeaky clean. The publican, on the other hand, possesses no such virtue in which to glory. He can only say, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.” And this fellow, says Jesus, goes home “justified”, set right with God.

]Any congregation sees only part of the minister’s work, the part that pertains to preaching, teaching, pastoring, administering. The other part of the minister’s work no one sees (except perhaps the secretary). This part is the minister’s work with “losers”. They come to the minister for help. They are out of money and they want a few dollars for this or that. They are chronically mentally ill, and with the insight of the mentally ill and the unguardedness of the mentally ill, they don’t understand why they are in trouble every time they say “The emperor has no clothes” when it’s perfectly plain that the emperor has no clothes and all the sane people around them know it too – even as sane people won’t say it.

The women who come to the minister for a few dollars want money for two items, 90% of the time: paper diapers and drugs for yeast infections. For a long time I have known that the people who have drug plans are those with jobs good enough that they don’t need drug plans, while the people without drug plans are those with jobs poor enough that they do need drug plans. (I trust no one here today is going to begrudge these poor women money for paper diapers, even though most women here washed cloth diapers for years.)

And then there’s the family whose son or husband has hanged himself and the family needs a funeral that “won’t last very long.” Anguished families from the other side of the tracks have one question only concerning the funeral: “Will it last long?”

These people sidle up to me as unobtrusively as they can. Either they have no inclination to join us at worship on Sunday morning, or else they don’t feel comfortable here. They likely think (quite mistakenly) that we don’t hurt as they do, that life is rosy for us all the time, that we aren’t caught in the same suffering. For years now I have been haunted by their non-appearance on Sunday mornings.

I’m haunted because Luke keeps telling us that a woman whose life was a moral mess-up found in Jesus what she had found nowhere else. Luke tells us that Zacchaeus was intrigued enough by Jesus to come as close as he could while remaining unnoticed. And then there was the dying convict who gasped to his gallows-mate whom he was seeing for the first time, “Won’t you remember me when you come into your kingdom?” — and received a word that let him die relieved. I’ve asked myself a thousand times why these people aren’t found here.

And then one day I realized that Jesus didn’t meet them in the synagogue. He met the woman in a man’s home. He met Zacchaeus at a shopping centre. He met the dying convict at the local garbage dump. He didn’t meet any of them in the synagogue.

Not so long ago I had to drive home from the hospital a woman and her two young children. Her third child had just been admitted on account of stomach trouble. Three children, no husband. A fellow who was fond of her (inappropriately fond) got into an argument with another fellow (also inappropriately fond) over her; the first fellow stabbed the second fellow to death on a Sunday night. Bob Rumball, the minister of the deaf congregation in Toronto , buried him. The next day the manager of an IGA store phoned me: the woman, needing food for her children, had written a rubber cheque. I’m not pretending the woman is virtuous; she isn’t. While she has no doubt been victimized by much in her life, I’m not pretending that she isn’t also self-victimized; she is. I’m not pretending that she possesses the homemaking skills needed to raise her family; she doesn’t. Her children’s material future is as bleak as hers. She is a loser. When Luke came upon stories like hers in the oral traditions about Jesus, he fastened on them. Luke says that these people, not often found in the synagogue, welcomed Jesus as warmly as he welcomed them.

(iii) Also important to Luke, because important first to his Lord, were women. Luke mentions thirteen women mentioned nowhere else in the gospels. All of the gospel writers recognized that Jesus elevated women and gave them a status and honour they had received nowhere else. Oddly enough, Mark momentarily slipped back into the old way of thinking. Mark tells us that Jesus had four brothers, and Mark names them. Then Mark adds that Jesus also had sisters — without stating how many or what their names were! But Luke tells us that the first European convert to the Christian faith was a woman, Lydia by name. Luke tells us that it was wealthy women who financed the band of disciples when those men had renounced gainful employment. Luke knew much of the degradation of women, and he was determined to overturn it.

Several years ago, when the Anglican and United Churches were discussing church union, some Anglicans objected strenuously to women clergy. “Why”, they said, “if a woman presides at Holy Communion and says, `This is my body’, she will fan something in male worshippers better left unfanned.” Odd, isn’t it, that the same critics of church union never objected that when I, a male, preside at Holy Communion I send women wild with surges of libido.

For years most Christian denominations have forbidden women to speak in public worship. But Luke tells us that when the Spirit of God moved the four daughters of Phillip, those women stood up and spoke.

We must remember that only a few years ago women were not allowed to vote. In 1929 the government of Canada maintained that documents using the word “person” didn’t pertain to women, since women were non-persons. It was only two decades ago that Flora MacDonald, a Member of Parliament, found herself excluded from a state function in Europe : the organizers had assumed that no woman would be representing a nation. (What did they think of Margaret Thatcher? that she was a freak of some sort?) Today, right now, in four-fifths of Christendom, women are denied access to ordination — despite the fact that women were the first eyewitnesses of the resurrection, and being such an eyewitness was a condition of being an apostle, no less. (How is it that women qualify as apostles but not as ministers?) Luke faithfully reflected his Lord’s elevation of women.

II: — We shouldn’t think that this is all there is to Dr. Luke. There’s a great deal more to him. There are three emphases in Luke’s mind and heart that receive more attention than anywhere else in the NT. The three emphases are joy, the Holy Spirit, and prayer. All three are related; all three flow into and out of each other. In Luke’s writings Jesus prays more, and Christians pray more, than in any other NT writings. Luke also says more about the Spirit, God’s intimate, effectual work in and among Christian people. And Luke’s writings throb with joy.

Luke knows that as we are brought to faith in Jesus Christ we are lifted up out of ourselves, up to the One who rejoices himself. There is joy in heaven, says Luke, when someone finally unclutters her life and welcomes the bread of life. “Joy before the angels of God”, he adds, when someone who is meandering blindly is made to see and steps out on the Way. There is merriment, dancing, a party when the wayward and the foolish “wisen up” and come home.

In describing the growth of the young church in Acts Luke speaks again and again of the Spirit, God’s unique effectiveness in vivifying the witness of the disciples, in supplying encouragement to believers in the face of resistance, and in causing love to triumph within the congregation amidst disagreement and suspicion. When missioners announce the good news of the gospel and some who have never heard it before take their stand with the apostles, Luke writes, “There was much joy in that city.” When persecution flays the missioners themselves Luke tells us that these men and women were “filled with the Holy Spirit and with joy.” Luke knows that people turned in on themselves never find the happiness they seek; he knows just as certainly that as people are moved to look away from themselves to that kingdom and its Lord now filling the horizon of their lives, their discontent gives way to joy. Luke begins his gospel with the note of joy: Zechariah and Elizabeth are told they will find joy in their old-age fertility as their son, John the Baptist, is born to herald the Messiah. Luke ends his gospel on a note of joy with the resurrection story of Jesus, as witnesses to it “returned to Jerusalem with great joy.”

In telling the Christian story as he has, and specifically in speaking of Jesus as he has, Luke has told us much about himself. Plainly Luke has enormous confidence in the Spirit or effectiveness of God; plainly Luke’s own heart pulsates; plainly all of this is nourished by the time Luke himself spends on his knees — as was the case with his Lord before him.

As for Luke’s attention to children, women, the poor, the outcast, the marginalized, the disadvantaged, the suffering — Luke’s attention here reflects the sensitive observation of the physician who sees the wounded of the world every day.

And as for Luke’s provision of a written gospel that is Gentile-friendly, we can only thank God for this one Gentile who knew that the Jew from Nazareth had other sheep of another fold, and knew that you and I, Gentiles that we are, are just these sheep.

Victor Shepherd

June 2005

Luke 1: 39-56

It’s easy to sympathize with revolutionary movements, since revolutions are spawned by shocking injustices and unendurable oppression. It’s easy to see a new day dawning in revolutionary movements, a new day for those who have endured the long night of exploitation and frustration.

Because it’s so easy to sympathize with revolutionary movements we are all the more jarred — if not left feeling hopeless — when at last we admit that the movement which promised human liberation has delivered no such thing. No one knew this better than Robespierre, an architect of the French Revolution with its threefold promise of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”. Robespierre was executed at the hands of the social transmutation he had engineered. Little wonder he commented, minutes before his death, “Revolutions consume their daughters”.

As we watch Latin American countries lurch from fascism to communism, from the political far-right to the political far-left, we see it happening all over again. The African nations that threw off colonialism because it was cruel have installed a political monster whose human rights violations make colonialism appear almost benign. In pre-Revolutionary Russia Czarist rule was deemed insupportable; yet in the early period of Leninist rule the state executed one thousand people per month. A revolution that had promised to feed people still couldn’t supply each citizen with a loaf of bread 70 years later. Promising people freedom it demoralized them with a secret police; promising human fulfilment it couldn’t even grant mere recognition of human beings.

Revolutions founder over one thing: human nature. And in a fallen world, “human nature” means “human depravity”. The problem with revolutionary movements is this: they are incapable of being genuinely revolutionary! They merely “revolve”; that is, turn up, recycle, the same fallen human nature. Revolutionary movements cannot get to the heart of the matter simply because they are powerless to deal with the human heart. Political leaders may speak of a “New World Order”; Christians, however, know that the only new world order is the kingdom of God. “New” orders (so-called) are merely a case of deja vu. The only real revolution is the kingdom of God, fashioned and ruled by the king himself. It alone supplies the new heart, new mind, new spirit of which the prophets spoke, for which everyone longs, and which Jesus Christ alone bestows.

I: — According to Mary, mother of our Lord and spokesperson of his revolution, real revolution begins with the scattering of the proud in the imagination of their hearts. “Heart” is biblical shorthand for the innermost core of a person, the “nerve centre”, the “control panel”. “Heart” has to do with thinking, willing, feeling and discerning. In addition, “heart” means identity, who we really are underneath all cloaks, disguises and social conventions. The “imagination of our heart” is our fashioning a deity of our own making, a god after our own image and likeness, which deity we follow zealously. Through the prophet Isaiah God says, “I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations.” Isaiah knows that first we disdain the Holy One of Israel and his claim upon us; then we fabricate whatever deity will legitimate and satisfy our craving, whether we crave wealth or recognition or ascendancy or anything else.

While Mary is customarily depicted as demure and dainty, naive to the nth degree, the picture she paints of human nature is anything but naive: it is stark. She tells us of proud people who are victimized by the imagination of their heart — all of us; we are at this moment stumbling down paths “which are not good”, certainly not godly. All of us are like the fool of whom the psalmist speaks, the fool who “said in his heart, ‘There is no God'”. He’s a fool not because he doesn’t believe God exists; he’s a fool just because he believes God exists and yet maintains that there are no consequences to dismissing the Holy One of Israel while preferring and pursuing the imagination of the heart, no consequences to exchanging the deity we fancy for the God who claims our faithfulness. Blinded by and in love with the gods of our own making we are all alike fools whose folly is going to prove fatal.

Yet Mary remains spokesperson for a revolution which is to be announced as good news, the uniquely good news of Christmas: God has scattered the proud! Our first response to learning that God scatters us vigorously may not be that we have just heard good news! To be told that we have been scattered, at God’s hand, suggests that God has hammered us so hard as to fragment us, and then dismissively swept away the fragmented remains. To be sure, we have been judged; we have been found wanting. Yet this is not to say that God sweeps us away in his judgement. The Greek verb “to scatter” (DIASKORPIZO) also means “to winnow”. To winnow grain is to toss a shovelful so that the wind carries away chaff but leaves behind the kernel, prized and soon to be put to use. In other words, God scatters us, the proud, inasmuch as he longs to save us and intends to use us. In getting rid of chaff he lays bare that heart which he can then renew in accord with his nature and kingdom, and then use ever after.

“Scattering the proud in the imagination of their hearts” is essential if a revolution is to be real and not merely a recycling of human depravity. Mary insists that in the invasion of his Son God has scattered us all and will continue to do so, yet not out of petulance or irritability or frustration or disgust. God scatters us — winnows us — inasmuch as he plans to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves and use us in ways we cannot anticipate.

II: — Mary maintains that God has done something more; God has “put down the mighty from their thrones”. But has he? Has God levelled those who strut? Has he crumbled those who tyrannize? In one sense it appears that God has done no such thing. Caesar Augustus was not deposed the day Jesus was born. No mighty ruler has been unseated just because the gospel was upheld. We need think only of Stalin’s cynical comment when told that the pope opposed Stalin’s mass murders. “The pope?”, snickered Stalin, “How many troops does the pope have?” Stalin strutted just because he knew that he, and no one else, ruled the former USSR.

And yet at a much deeper level the advent of Jesus Christ does mean that God has put down the mighty from their thrones. Herod wasn’t paranoid when he raged that the Bethlehem child was a threat to his throne. After all, in the coming of Jesus Christ into our midst the world’s only rightful ruler has appeared. Herod intuited correctly that the Christmas Gift would win to himself the loyalty of men and women who would never transfer that loyalty back to Herod. All political manipulators and ideologues and social engineers and “educational” programmers; in short, all who want to reshape society, even remake humankind, must know sooner or later that just because the world’s rightful ruler has appeared and is now enthroned their authority has been exposed as mere posturing and their promises as mere wind. Discerning Christians testify that those who think they can coerce or control have in fact been dethroned. They have been dethroned in that no ruler or tyrant can tell Christians who they are (Christ alone does this); no ruler or tyrant can make Christians who they are (Christ alone does this) — which is to say, no ruler or tyrant can ever make Christians what they don’t want to be. Corrie Ten Boom was as simple a Christian as one could find. (She was a fifty-year old unmarried daughter of a Dutch watchmaker who kept house for her father and sister). Yet Corrie Ten Boom defied Hitler by harbouring Jewish refugees in German-occupied Holland. She knew the terrible risk involved; she knew what the penalty would be. Whereupon she persisted all the more resolutely in her defiance. The moment she refused to admit any legitimacy to Hitler’s rule; the moment she refused to conform to it — in that moment Hitler was dethroned. Plainly the most coercive man in Europe was powerless in the face of a fifty-year old, unarmed woman. Yes, he could imprison her (and he did); but he could never tell her who she was; he could never make her who she was; and he could never make her what she didn’t want to be. Any Christian who refuses to conform anywhere to the blustering and bullying of “the mighty” just because that Christian acknowledges the rulership of Christ alone; any such Christian testifies that God continues to dethrone.

The revolution of which Mary speaks is unquestionably real. Still, the question can always be asked, “Real as it is, how far does it go? Whom does it finally affect?” It’s easy to say that it manifestly affects all the bullies we don’t like in any case and whom we are glad enough to see dethroned. But Mary’s revolution is unique, qualitatively different from all social dislodgings and historical upheavals, only if that innermost tyrant, that self-important egotist who manipulates me, is dethroned as well. I know how easy it is to look disdainfully at the person who is so obviously ruled by chemical substance or psychological habituation or shameless self-promotion when all the while I secretly scramble to hide the things that control me and brazenly try to excuse them when I can no longer hide them. I know how easy it is to speak of a new heart and mind when my reactions, in unguarded moments, suggest a heart still ruled by passions and instincts which serve my lingering sin, my self-indulgence, self-advantage, and self-promotion.

Then I can only cry out to God that I do want the revolution of which Mary speaks to reach me and revolutionize me. And so far from gloating over the fact that God has put down the swaggerers whom I am glad to see put down, I must plead with him to dethrone in me whatever has usurped the rule of Jesus Christ. For only then will the genuine “new world order” be under way.

III: — It is a singular mark of God’s kindness that the work of God’s left hand assists the work of his right; to say the same thing differently, a mark of God’s kindness that his right hand is stronger than his left, that mercy triumphs over judgement, that whatever wound he inflicts is only surgical repair for the sake of restoration to health. Having “put down”, God now “exalts”; he exalts “those of low degree”, the humble.

The humble, it must be noted, are not those who belittle themselves miserably and otherwise display abysmally weak self-image. (Crippling self-image isn’t humility; it’s illness.) Neither is “humility”, so-called, a religious technique whereby we can get ourselves “exalted”. And of course humility could never be the end-result of struggling to make ourselves humble, since the effort of making ourselves humble merely reinforces pride. Humility is self-forgetfulness, the self-forgetfulness that steals over us when we lose ourselves in something or someone who is bigger, richer, deeper.

In the revolution of which Mary speaks it is these humble people, self-forgetful people, whom God exalts. To be exalted, ultimately, is to be lifted up a child of God. When John speaks of the incarnation, its purpose and its result, he writes, “To all who received him [Jesus Christ], who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” In other words, to “forget” ourselves into Christ is to become sons and daughters of God. To the believers in Thessalonica Paul writes, “You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We don’t belong to the night or to the darkness.” What it is to be exalted — lifted up, held up — as a child of God who no longer belongs to the night or to the darkness Paul makes clear in his letter to the congregation in Philippi; those people are “children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life.”

There is nothing more revolutionary than the person who shines in the midst of a perverse world. No one, believer or unbeliever, has ever doubted that the world can repopulate itself (that is, no one has ever doubted that a crooked and perverse generation can produce crooked and perverse offspring). Humanists insist that the world doesn’t have to repopulate itself (that is, left to itself the world can produce better and better citizens — this belief is clung to even though the wars of last century alone have slew one hundred million.) Christians, however, know that the world has to repopulate itself, can do nothing except repopulate itself, for the only person who is profoundly different, before God, is the person whom God’s grace has rendered self-forgetful and then rendered God’s own child. This person shines like a Westinghouse light bulb in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. This person is a beacon of hope, because this person is living testimony that at God’s hand there is something genuinely different.

IV: — Mary gathers up everything about her revolutionary manifesto in her pithy summation: “God has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.”

Who are the rich whom God has sent away empty? Bashing the rich is fashionable nowadays. And of course those who like to bash the rich are quick to tell us who the rich are. The rich are those who have fifty dollars more than the bashers have; the rich are those who have a slightly better pension or a slightly larger home than the bashers have. Such an attitude bespeaks only envy and resentment. The truth is, those whose “riches” are a spiritual threat aren’t those who have money but rather those who are preoccupied with money — whether they have it or not.

The mediaeval Christians who spoke of the “Seven Deadly Sins” were correct in naming gluttony one of them. They were also correct in insisting that gluttony is not a matter of eating too much; gluttony is being preoccupied with food, even if one’s preoccupation with food is a preoccupation with avoiding food! (In other words the person obsessed with slenderness is as much food-preoccupied — and therefore gluttonous — as the person who can think only of what he is going to eat next.) It is no different with respect to money. Those who don’t have it can be as absorbed by it as those who are awash in it.

In those revolutions which remain forever ineffective those who have money disdain and dismiss those who lack it, while those who lack it hate and envy those who have it. While appearing to be poles apart, those who have it and those who lack it in fact are identical, since both alike are engrossed with it. Only the real revolution gets us beyond this, for only the real revolution makes our preoccupations shrivel as the holy God looms before us in his awesome, all-consuming immensity. As this One looms before us the chaff we have been gorging is simply forgotten, and we become aware of a hunger we never knew.

Our Lord Jesus has promised that all who hunger for God and his righteousness are going to be filled. All who crave the ultimate satisfaction of a relationship with God which can’t be snatched away by a paperback putdown or evaporated by the fires of harassment; all who finally hunger for this as they hunger for nothing else will be given that bread of life which profoundly satisfies yet never satiates. For this bread leaves us seeking none other yet always seeking more of him who is himself way and truth and life.

The rich who are sent empty away; they need not remain away. For as soon as they recognize their preoccupations as unworthy of someone who is created to be a child of God they too will hunger, will look to him who alone satisfies, and will be yet another fulfilment of Mary’s Christmas cry.

                                                                                                   Victor Shepherd    

December 2001

Luke 1:46-55
Genesis 3

I: Why is there unrelenting tension between men and women? Women feel set upon by men, victimized, violated even. In the wake of the feminist protest men feel misunderstood, maligned, even conspired against.

Why is the struggle for survival just that, a struggle? We wouldn’t mind working hard if we knew that fruitfulness followed our work as surely as night follows day. But whether we are farmers or physicians, office-workers or educators, something is always going wrong; we are never clear of frustration; we are forever having to scramble and scrabble.

Why is it that mere difference between groups of people becomes the occasion of lethal hostility? As slight a difference as the difference between brown skin and white skin and black skin shouldn’t precipitate mayhem and murder. But it does!

Why are we profoundly discontented ourselves? We thought that the new house would make us happy — and it did, for three weeks or so. The new car lifted our spirits — until our neighbour drove up with a costlier car.

Why is it that humankind never advances? To be sure, we make progress in the realm of science; that is, we progress insofar as we harness nature. But humankind itself makes no progress at all. Our foreparents sinned and suffered and slew; we sin and suffer and slay. History, we have learned, is the history of warfare. Having learned this, however, we still are powerless to do anything about it.

Why is it that everyone blames everyone else for what’s wrong? The socialist blames the stony-hearted capitalist with his exploitative greed. The capitalist blames the masses with their pleasure-loving shortsightedness and their irresponsible undependability. Everyone points the finger and says, “It’s your fault!”

Our foreparents contended with bubonic plague; then with smallpox; then with tuberculosis. Now we contend with aids and its social aftermath. Is humankind on a treadmill?

Here is my last question, a different question. Why is the gospel “good news”? Wherein is it good news? If it’s genuinely good, it has to be more than news, because the last thing we need is more words. If it is genuinely good, then it has to be a new reality.

II: — Today is the first Sunday in Advent. Today we begin looking ahead to the birth of him whom St.John describes as “the remedy for the defilement of our sins.” In order to understand our defilement — its nature, its scope, its inescapability — we must go back to the old, old story of the Fall.

Adam and Eve — “humankind” and “mother of the living” is what their names mean respectively. This story is a parable of every man and every woman.

In this profound saga God has placed Adam and Eve in a garden; Eden, it is called, the Hebrew word for “delight”. Life is blessed here. Everything they need to nourish themselves is ready-to-hand. God’s provision attests his goodness, kindness, helpfulness. There is one thing, however, which they are to avoid. They must not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now “good and evil” is a Hebrew expression meaning, “everything you can think of; the sum total of human possibilities.” Imagine yourself doing anything at all; I mean anything. The sum total of these “anythings at all” is what the Hebrew mind means by “good and evil”.n Adam and Eve are forbidden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for one reason: God loves them, God blesses them, God protects them. Among these “anythings at all” which we imagine ourselves doing; among these are a great many which do not bless: they curse us. Among these are many which do not enrich us; they impoverish us. Many do not protect us; they expose us to influences and powers which are ultimately fatal.

A physician-friend of mine dropped over to see me one evening. He asked me if I knew what the single largest threat to public health was in the world today. I didn’t. He told me: promiscuity. Then we talked about “crack”. The first wave of crack-babies has entered school. Already it is incontrovertible that these children have attention spans so short that they are not going to learn anything; they bristle with the ugliest hostility, and they are unable to form any conscience at all. Does anyone still doubt that there are some “anythings at all” which really are ruinous? The two I have mentioned are dramatic and glaring. There are other “anythings at all” which are far more subtle; discernment is needed to recognize them. Yet discern we should, since in eden, Eden, God wants only to protect us and bless us.

In our ancient story (as relevant, of course as today’s newspaper which confirms it one hundred times over) temptation is personified by a talking snake. (Don’t laugh; even fairy tales are always profound.) Temptation personified says softly, “Now about this tree whose fruit you are not to eat; did God really say you were not to eat it? Did he really say that?” In other words, temptation casts doubt on the command of God. And since God loves us, to cast doubt on the command of God is to cast aspersion on the love of God and the goodness of God. At this point all of us are whispering to ourselves, “God didn’t say it; or if he did, he had no business saying it; he must be a spoilsport; he is certainly arbitrary.” First we doubt the goodness of God’s command; then we deny that violating it will turn blessing into curse.

In our old story the woman replies to the serpent, “God says that we aren’t to eat of this tree; furthermore, he said we aren’t even to touch it.” She is lying! She exaggerates. As soon as she exaggerates she lies! God never said they weren’t to touch it. She is making this up herself. First, doubt of the goodness of the command of God; second, denial that violating it (violating God himself) turns blessing into curse; third, inventing a law of life for ourselves. We make ourselves lawgivers; we decide by what code we should live. The living voice of the living God isn’t heard at all now, because we are telling ourselves what we think renders life blessed.

The serpent has all of us on the slippery slopes now. The serpent says, “I’m aware that God said you would die; that is, be estranged from God himself, with horrible consequences — I’m aware that God said you would die if you extended your lives into those “anythings at all” which he says are ruinous. But what does he know? You won’t die! Just the opposite! You will be exalted. Your consciousness will be altered. Your mood will be elevated. Life will be beautiful. You will be freed up as never before. Your self-awareness will be expanded until you feel you are the centre of the universe. Your self-confidence will be inflated until you feel there is nothing you can’t succeed at. You will have a perspective on life that you have never had before — the same perspective as that of God himself.”

Adam and Eve eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. “Yada”, the Hebrew verb to know, doesn’t have the force of “to acquire information”. We modern folk assume that to know something is to have information about that thing. To know automobiles is to have information about horsepower and wheel bases. But for our Hebrew foreparents to know always has the force of personal acquaintance with a reality. To know sorrow is to be personally acquainted with grief. To know pain is to be in pain. To know God is to be personally acquainted with God himself. Not to know God is to thrust off God himself; to repudiate him and spurn his goodness and his protection and his blessing. Not to know God, therefore, is to know ‘good and evil’. It is to have personal acquaintance, intimate acquaintance with that reality which impoverishes life, curses it, and ultimately destroys it.

AND THIS IS WHERE WE ALL LIVE! We are — every one of us — profoundly alienated from God, hauntingly alienated, fatally alienated.

III: — And then the question which God puts to Adam, to everyone: “Where are you?” Well, where are you? Where am I? Speaking for all of us Adam says to God, “I’m hiding from you.” How silly! As if anyone could hide from God! Adam is now as ridiculous as the four year old playing hide ‘n’ seek who thinks that because she regards herself hidden away no one else can see her or find her.

To be a fallen human being (which all of us are) is to flee God, flee into hiding, ridiculously thinking that we can hide from God. Our situation fails to be humorous simply because it is tragic. After all, life is not a game. We have said to God, “We don’t want you.” And God has said to us, “You don’t have to have me. But then neither do you have to have my goodness, my protection, my blessing. To do without me — your preference! — is to be stuck with the consequences of doing without me.”

There is something we must understand clearly. To thrust away the only righteous ruler of the earth is to be stuck with manifold unrighteousness and its spinoffs. To cast aspersion on the goodness of God is to wade around in wickedness. To disdain God’s protection is to be defenceless against exploitative evil. To assume that God’s wisdom can be improved upon is to be poisoned with the unwisdom of folly. In a word, to forfeit blessing is to be stuck with curse. AND THIS IS WHERE WE ALL LIVE!

“But can’t we go back to Eden?”, someone asks with more than a hint of desperation. Many attempts are made. All utopias are an attempt at recovering Eden. All such attempts are going to fail. Marxism was such an attempt. Its failure is writ large. Every pronouncement that men and women are only the product of their environment reflects another attempt. Rousseau’s notion of the “noble savage” — that primitive peoples were somehow intrinsically virtuous and were corrupted only by civilization — another attempt. Anyone who disagrees with Jeremiah — “The heart of many is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt” — anyone who thinks that Jeremiah exaggerates assumes that Eden can be recovered. In our ancient story an angel with a flaming sword bars the way to the tree of life in the garden. We can’t go back and seize the tree of life ourselves and undo the deadly curse we have brought down on ourselves. We cannot resurrect ourselves. We cannot restore ourselves. The flaming sword which turns every which way in the hand of the angel fends off any and all who are so naive and foolish as to think that they or their scheme can undo the Fall and its consequences. Eden cannot be recovered. Looking back is pointless just because going back is impossible.

IV: — Today is the first Sunday in Advent. Advent is the season of longing, of waiting, of expectancy. What are we longing for? We long for Eden. Not everyone uses this vocabulary. Most people long for they know not what. In truth, nonetheless, they long for Eden. What are they waiting for? They are waiting for someone who can undo Eden’s curse. Why the expectancy? Because deep down they want to be delivered from the dis-ease which keeps gnawing at them. They are mature enough to realize that the grab-bag of grown-up trinkets and toys does nothing to the halt the dis-ease which haunts them. But since there is no return to Eden the entire world must be doomed to unending frustration.

Not so! Advent reminds us that we are not to look back, but ahead. In Advent we stand on tiptoe anticipating the very blessing which we cannot give ourselves. In Advent we await Christmas as eagerly as the youngster awaits opening the first gift. THE gift of Christmas for us all, of course, is that new addition to the human family which is more than an addition; the gift is he himself who is both humanity renewed and lord of the renewed humanity.

Advent recalls another woman speaking. Not Eve rationalizing her capitulation to temptation; this time it’s Mary exulting in her service to the world. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour… henceforth all generations will call me blessed.” Generations to come will call her blessed, for in her child what we have lost and cannot recover ourselves God has given us just because in his mercy he will suffer anything himself to save us from our self-inflicted misery.

Adam and Eve succumbed to the blandishments of the tempter. But the Christmas child, grown up, will resist the tempter in the wilderness, resist throughout his ministry, resist again in another garden (Gethsemane, this time), resist finally on the cross when mockers tell him he might as well unhook himself since he is not doing any good in any case.

In the garden of Eden we were barred from storming the tree of life in an effort to save ourselves. We are not allowed to arrogate to ourselves what rightly belongs to God alone. Yet by God’s mercy there is another tree. Concerning this tree no angel with flaming sword bars us access. Instead access is guaranteed us and the invitation is sounded continuously: “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” What hangs from this tree we are urged to taste and so to see for ourselves that God is good indeed.

The apostles discerned that in Jesus Christ we were given not only that saviour whom we need individually. With him we are introduced to a new world. In other words, our Lord brings a renewed creation with him. All who cling to him in faith find their renewed life unfolding in a new world, a new environment.

For this reason Paul says that in Christ there is neither male nor female. He doesn’t mean that gender-distinction is eliminated in a unisex muddle. He means that gender-distinction is preserved and enriched just because gender-hostility is overcome. In Christ there is neither Jew nor gentile. He doesn’t mean that the distinction is eliminated. (Paul was always aware that the gentile world never lets Jews forget that they are Jews; he was also aware that God requires Jews not to forget that they are Jews. He insists that in Christ (and in Christ alone is what he means) the deepest-grained hostility anywhere in the world — the hostility between Jew and non-Jew — is overcome. And if this hostility is overcome in Christ, any hostility is as well. What other instances of renewed life in a renewed world can you share with the rest of us?

A few minutes ago we saw that to do without God, to want to do without God, is to do without God’s blessing and therefore live under curse. But in the One who is God incarnate there is blessing only. How could there be anything else? And therefore in his company that disease which can neither be named nor denied is eclipsed by gratitude for him whose name we now know, whose name, Yehoshuah, means “God saves”, and whom we have no wish to deny.

In Christ our dust-to dust exile is overarched by the promise of resurrection: our destiny is not death, decomposition of body and dissolution of personhood. Our destiny is eternal life at God’s own hand.

The last question I left with you in introduction of the sermon was, “Why is the gospel good news?” It’s good news not in the sense that it is up-to-the-minute information (like Barbara Frum’s broadcast.) It is good news just because it announces a new reality so winsome as to breathe its own invitation.

In Advent we don’t look back in nostalgia and regret; we look ahead in eagerness and confidence. For there is given to us the one whom all humankind craves, whom Christians know to be Jesus the Christ, and who caused Mary’s heart to sing, even as he will make our hearts sing for ever and ever.

F I N I S

                                                                                                       Victor Shepherd

Luke 2:1-14
Col. 1:15-20

Many people who are musically sophisticated regard Itzakh Perlman as the world’s finest violinist. Yet his violin-playing isn’t the most noticeable feature about him. Anyone who has seen him winces when he walks, if it can be called “walking.” Perlman had polio as a child and ever since has barely been able to shuffle along, ever so slowly, each step laboured and clumsy, swinging his caliper crutches in a monumental struggle just to get onto the concert-hall platform, while an assistant carries his precious violin for him. Perlman is the only violin virtuoso who has to sit to play.

Not so long ago in Lincoln Centre, New York City, Perlman was only a few bars into a violin concerto with the N.Y. Philharmonic Orchestra when a string broke on his violin. He waved his bow to the conductor to stop. Perlman removed the broken string from his instrument and signalled the conductor to begin again. Then Perlman played the entire concerto on the three remaining strings of his violin. Thunderous applause greeted him at concerto’s end. When it had finally died away Perlman said to the hushed audience, “Sometimes in life we have to do our best with what’s left.” Then he handed his defective violin to his assistant, retrieved his caliper crutches, and shuffled haltingly off the platform, once more doing his best with what was left.

Many people who appear — and are — extraordinarily gifted nevertheless have had to do their best with what was left. One such person was Isaac Watts, known throughout Christendom as “the father of the English hymn.” He wrote hundreds of hymns, many of which will never be forgotten. What few people know is that Watts was deranged frequently, and deranged for extended periods of his life. There were protracted periods when he wrote nothing, did nothing (apart from survive in the care of a kind family that protected him) as he waited until sanity returned. There were periods in his life when it would have been just as accurate to speak of episodic sanity as of episodic derangement. What did Watts write when sanity caught up to him and his suffering abated? “Come, let us join our cheerful songs with angels ’round the throne; ten thousand thousand are their tongues but all their joys are one.” Or again, “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun doth his successive journeys run.” As ill as he was for so much of his troubled life, Watts could still write from his heart, “My God, how endless is thy love!” Perhaps he is best known for “O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.” Certainly we’ve all sung his splendid Christmas carol, “Joy to the World!” It’s plain that Watts’s literary output was a matter of doing his best with what was left, what was left of his sanity. He always did his best.

God does his best, too, with what’s left. Yet there’s a difference here. When God does his best with what’s left of a fallen world, does his best with a disfigured creation, does his best with an evil-riddled cosmos; when God does his best with this he doesn’t merely extract bravely whatever good remains in it. Rather, he restores it. When God does his best with what’s left of a warped world, he recreates that world.

Isaac Watts knew this so very well. He articulated it for us in his Christmas carol, “Joy to the World.”

I: — “No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground”, cries Watts. Plainly it’s a reference to Genesis 3, the old, old story of the world’s fall. What has happened? God has never been indifferent to humankind’s root defiance of him and root disobedience to him and root ingratitude; he’s never been indifferent to the primordial posture we assume before him, a posture wherein our “know-it-all” smirk casts aspersions on his goodness, on the goodness of his promise to us and his claim upon us. His claim upon us is rooted in his promise to us; his promise to us is rooted in his own heart. Heart and promise and claim are one in wanting only to bless us. We, however, assume he’s an arbitrary spoilsport out to make us miserable. We doubt him, defy him, disdain him, disobey him.

Contrary to what the person-in-the-street thinks, God always gives us what we want. No longer pressing himself upon us, he takes a step back from us. (This is what we want: a little more distance between him and us.) As he takes a step back from us, the crown of creation, he thereby takes a step back from every aspect of the creation beneath its crown. A vacuum opens up between him and the creation. Into the vacuum there pours all manner of evil. Now the creation is marred and disfigured and warped. “Thorns and thistles” infest the ground, as the old, old story in Genesis tells us. In a primitive agricultural society, thorns and thistles infesting the ground bespeak frustration; so much frustration, in fact, that only ceaseless labour and ingenuity stave off utter futility. (Everyone with even a backyard vegetable garden knows that only ceaseless labour and ingenuity stave off the frustration of having the vegetable-enterprise end in utter futility.)

As for “sins and sorrows”, they are as endemic in a fallen world as thorns and thistles. Jesus says, without argument or proof, “Whoever sins is a slave to sin.” Foregoing argument or proof, he assumes that anyone who disagrees with him is incorrigibly stupid. “Whoever sins is a slave to sin.” Since we all sin, we are all in bondage. Sorrows? “Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows”, says the psalmist. The Hebrew verb can as readily mean “run after” as “choose.” “Those who run after another deity multiply their sorrows.” The fall of humankind means that we do run after other gods; and just as surely do we multiply our sorrows.

Yet Watts can write his carol, “Joy to the World!”, because he knows that the coming of Jesus Christ means that the curse upon the world is overturned; it’s reversed. The coming of Jesus Christ means that the blessings of Christ are as far-reaching (and known to be as far-reaching) as the curse has been. While our Lord’s pronouncement is unarguable, “Whoever sins is a slave to sin”, equally unarguable is his declaration, “If the Son makes you free, you are free indeed.” While those who run after other gods unquestionably multiply their sorrows, those who join our Lord on that Way which he is, join him in running the race of life, always looking unto him who has pioneered the way for us — these people unquestionably multiply their joys. As for frustration, frustration so intense as to border on futility; in so far as we do the work that he has given us to do, kingdom-work, our work will never prove futile and we ourselves shall never go unrewarded.

“No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.”

II: — Watts has even more to say about the joy that has come to the world in the coming of Jesus Christ. “He rules the earth with truth and grace.” The same Lord who restores the world now rules it, and rules it with truth and grace.

Christ’s rulership is remarkable. After all, the rulers we are acquainted with do rule, to be sure, but they don’t rule with truth. They rule with something other than truth. They rule with disinformation. (Think of the Gulf of Tonkin incident with the American warship. The U.S. government arranged this bit of disinformation in order to bring the U.S.A. into the Viet Nam war.) Or they rule with duplicity. (Think of Toronto Councillor Howard Moscoe. When asked, two weeks ago, why charity casinos would be installed in North York after the citizens of North York had voted in a referendum against charity casinos, Moscoe unashamedly replied, “The referendum meant nothing.”) Or they rule with propaganda. (Think of the federal government’s promise a few years ago never to implement wage and price controls. Within ninety days of being re-elected it introduced the controls!) Or they rule with sheer, simple, self-interest and self-enrichment. (Illustrations here are superfluous.) Rulers rule, to be sure, but they don’t rule with truth.

Neither do they rule with grace. Our Lord, however, does. He rules with grace. Grace, throughout scripture, is God’s faithfulness to his own promise ever to be our God. Grace is his undeflectible resolve never to quit on us in anger or abandon us in disgust or dismiss us in impatience. Grace is God’s unalterable determination to remain true to himself in his promise to us regardless of our unfaithfulness in our promise to him. Since grace collides with our sin, then when grace meets our sin grace takes the form of mercy. And since mercy, so far from being mere benign sentiment, is effectual in the face of our sin, mercy issues in salvation, shalom, peace. For this reason the threefold “grace, mercy and peace” is found over and over in scripture. (Once again, in its collision with sin grace takes the form of mercy, and mercy triumphs so as to effect our peace with God, our salvation.)

Unlike the rulers we read about every day, our Lord “rules with truth and grace.”

III: — Several minutes ago I spoke of our need to “do our best with what’s left.” Perlman and Watts have done so. But in doing their best with what was left, were they merely doing what they could to prevent a disaster from sinking all the way down to total disaster, unrelieved disaster? At the end of the day are you and I realistically doing no more than this? In doing our best with what’s left, are we merely doing what we can to prevent a calamity from sinking all the way down to complete calamity?

No! In view of the fact that when God does his best with what’s left (a wounded, warped creation) he restores that creation wholly; in view of this our doing our best with what’s left is much more than merely salvaging a catastrophe: it’s an anticipation of the day when God’s perfect restoration is going to revealed; it’s a preview of the day when God’s restoration is going to be rendered as undeniable as it is unmistakable. Watts did what he did not because there was nothing else to do besides fall into total despair; Watts did what he did, rather, because he foresaw the day when he, like the deranged man in the gospel-stories, will be found seated, clothed and in his right mind. Perlman did what he did in anticipation of the day when he, like so many whom Jesus touched, will be found no longer lame but now leaping and cavorting, unhindered and uninhibited in every aspect of life. When you and I “do our best with what’s left” we aren’t merely trying to put a happy face on a monumental misfortune; we are anticipating the day, says Watts himself, when our Lord “makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.”

IV: — All of this being the case, what are we to do at this moment? Watts knew what we are to do: “Let every heart prepare him room.” We are to receive, or receive afresh, him whose blessings flow far as the curse is found. We are to receive, or receive afresh, the one who rules with truth and grace now and who is going to make the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.

We are to receive our Lord. We are going to do so as in faith we receive bread and wine, the vehicle of his self-giving to us now, as surely as body and blood were the vehicle of his self-giving for us then.

“Let every heart prepare him room.”

                                                                       Victor Shepherd     

December 1997

Luke 2:10-11

The world is always looking both for good news and for great joy.  The world also knows that there won’t be great joy unless there’s first good news. Everyone wants good news. Everyone is aware that newscasts are 90% bad news.       “All we ever hear on TV or radio is bad news” people complain.  “Why can’t we hear good news for a change?”

The answer isn’t hard to find.  We live in a fallen world. The “prince” of this world, says Jesus (not king, to be sure, but certainly prince) is characteristically a liar and a killer.  Omnipresent evil means that lethal falsification riddles everything. Sophistic savagery is always ready-to-hand. It’s no wonder that newscasts announce troubles of every sort in every place.  Nevertheless, we long to hear good news.

But we don’t want “good news” that’s make-believe. We want good news that’s good because true. There can be such good news only if in the midst of evil and evil-quickened conflict there is the profounder reality of God’s definitive incursion into human affairs. There can be good news only if he who is prince of this world is bested by the one who is king.

Christmas is this good news. Christmas isn’t wishful thinking or sentimental froth or saccharine make-believe.       Christmas is that good news which is true, real, profound; good news good enough to engender great joy – and all of this just because there has been born to us a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.

“Christ” the Lord? What does “Christ” mean? The child whose coming among us we celebrate in Advent isn’t named Jesus Christ in the way that I am Victor Shepherd. “Christ” isn’t his family name. It’s a description. It means “anointed”. Our Lord is the anointed one, anointed by his Father for our blessing.

Throughout Israel ’s history three figures were anointed: priests, prophets, kings.  When we are told that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one, we know that he gathers up in himself what priests and prophets and kings embodied, as well as that to which they pointed as they too looked for the coming one.

Since we have good news and great joy only because of the anointed one, Christ, we must probe what it means to say that in him priests and prophets and kings find their fulfilment.

I: — Let’s begin with the priests.  Priests ministered in the temple, where sacrifices were offered daily. The sacrifices were the core of worship inasmuch as sincere worshippers knew themselves to be sinners. They knew that defiled sinners had no right to approach the holy God.  They knew that defiled sinners couldn’t survive approaching the holy God. The temple sacrifices were the God-appointed means whereby people who could claim nothing and merited nothing except God’s judgement could nonetheless find a Father who cherished them and a Forgiver who pardoned them – and all of this without in any way compromising his holiness or denying their unrighteousness. The sacrifices in the temple gave people access to God precisely where they knew their sin otherwise barred them from him.

Today, of course, we are fastidious people.  We are careful to use deodorant, perfume, shaving lotion, cologne, air-wick. Today we should find the temple scene repulsive. Think of the sounds that animals make when they know their end is upon them; the smells they make. Think of the priest gathering a basinful of blood and throwing it over the steps surrounding the altar.

Alas, I fear we are too fastidious. We are shallow in our self-understanding: either we don’t think ourselves to be sinners at all or we think our sinnership to be trivial.  We are cavalier in our approach to God: of course he’s going to forgive us, since that’s the business he’s in – said Voltaire on our behalf.

Ancient people knew better.  They knew that sin is lethal. (Exactly what sin kills you and I could list for the next six months.)  They knew that sin breaks God’s heart, provokes God’s anger, and arouses God’s disgust. And because it does all this, the forgiving of sin is never cheap. Forgiveness is always and everywhere costly.

Costly for whom?   The animal brought to the temple was the best the worshipper owned.  It cost a great deal to give up.  And because it was a male animal, invaluable for purposes of breeding and therefore lucrative for the owner as well, when that animal was offered up to God the worshipper knew she had renounced her ticket to superiority of all kinds and was casting herself and her entire future on God.

What’s more, as the priest sacrificed the animal in the temple the worshipper placed her hand on it as a sign of her personal identification with the life offered up on her behalf.  Sobered now at what her reconciliation to God cost, she surrendered herself anew to him in gratitude and adoration.

The day came when the woolly lamb in the temple was no longer the sacrifice. The day came when the curly-haired baby in the manger grew up and offered himself as the Lamb of God.  Plainly he is the sacrifice by which a rebellious world is reconciled to God.  Yet because he has offered himself, he is also the priest who offers up the sacrifice. As priest he’s the anointed one.
Because he’s the anointed one offering himself for our sakes, you and I all humankind have access to God.  We have an access to God we don’t deserve yet which God has fashioned for us in his mercy, thanks to his Son.  While our sin breaks God’s heart and provokes his anger and arouses his disgust, the sacrifice our “great high priest” offers up for us gathers up God’s heartbreak and anger and disgust and defuses it all, thereby allowing any and all who want to go home to go home.

“Oh, Shepherd”, someone objects; “Why do you get into something this heavy at Christmas?   Why don’t you say something light at Christmas and save the ‘heavy’ for another day?” As a matter of fact there are several reasons why the Advent sermons should be substantial.

[1] There are usually people in church at this season who won’t hear the gospel announced for months, and they should hear something besides froth.

[2] We always administer Holy Communion in Advent.  The service of Holy Communion graphically depicts our Lord’s sacrifice. Surely no one is going to tell me that the truth of the cross may be seen in the Lord’s Supper at Christmas but it mustn’t be heard in the sermon at Christmas.

[3] We sing carols at Christmas, and the best hymn on our Lord’s sacrifice happens to be a Christmas carol, “Hark!       The Herald Angels Sing”. Listen to the words:

Hark!   The herald angels sing ‘Glory to the newborn king’.

Peace on earth, and mercy mild; God and sinners reconciled.

Or listen to another stanza:

Mild he lays his glory by, Born that man no more should die;

Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth.

The baby in the manger was born precisely in order that he might become the offering on the cross. He is the lamb of God, given us by the Father for the reconciliation of any and all who place their hand on the anointed one himself.       Jesus our Lord is sacrifice and priest together.

II: — Not only were priests presiding at sacrifices anointed; prophets were too.  Prophets were those who spoke for God and thereby acquainted their hearers with God. Prophets teach; as they teach about God, God himself takes over their teaching, as it were; God himself surges over hearers so that hearers are overtaken, then overwhelmed, and finally constrained to confess that God-in-person has addressed them.

The prophets were aware of much that modernity has forgotten. For one, the prophets knew that no amount of gazing inside ourselves will ever inform us of the truth of God or acquaint us with the person of God. They knew that every last human being is a bundle of contradictions.  Looking inside ourselves, therefore, will only inform us of a bundle of contradictions. Two, the prophets were aware that no amount of gazing outside ourselves will ever inform us of the truth of God or acquaint us with the person of God.  Looking outside ourselves informs us of what’s “out there”: suffering, grief, propaganda, treachery, waste, and war.

To be sure, the prophets never denied that self-contradicted people living in a convoluted world could nevertheless do much that is marvellous; they would readily have admitted that we can do, and do superbly well, philosophy, engineering, science, music, poetry, mathematics. The prophets denied, however, that we can inform ourselves of the truth of God or acquaint ourselves with the person of God.  For this to occur something else is needed; specifically, what’s needed is someone who has faced God, has heard him, and now turns to face us to speak for God.

One thing above all else makes the Hebrew prophets “tick”: they have heard God speak. Having heard God speak, they find themselves constrained to speak on his behalf. All the Hebrew prophets are aware that they have been admitted to the Besoth Yahweh, the council of God. They’ve been admitted to the throne-room of the heavenly court.  They aren’t presumptuous, engaging God in casual chit-chat.  In fact once admitted to the throne-room, they don’t speak to God at all. They describe it all as overhearing; they overhear God talking to himself, as it were. They listen in, reverently, attentively, while God thinks out loud.  Suddenly God takes notice of the prophets and speaks to them directly. At this moment the truth of God is stamped upon the prophet; the judgement of God is seared upon the prophet; the mercy of God and faithfulness of God and patience of God are imprinted upon the prophet indelibly.

At this point the prophet turns around from facing God in the throne-room and faces the people in the community.  “The Word of God is fire in my mouth”, Jeremiah cries to his people; “I have to let this word out or my mouth will ignite.”  Amos says laconically, “God has spoken.  Who can but prophesy?”

And so the prophet speaks.  He has stood in the council of God.  For this reason he can speak authentically of God. As the prophet speaks on God’s behalf, God himself empowers the prophet’s word and renders the prophet’s word a vehicle of God’s self-giving and self-communication. At this point hearers become aware that they aren’t hearing one man’s religious opinion; they aren’t even merely hearing someone speaking on behalf of God. At this point they are hearing God himself.

Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one.  He stands in the tradition of the prophets.  He speaks for God. Yet as the Incarnate one he speaks for God in a way that no Hebrew prophet could; he speaks conclusively for God just because he is God, Emman-u-el, God-with-us.

A prophet to be sure, yet more than a prophet, Jesus Christ speaks for God as God. Then he is the one we must hear and heed and cling to if we are to know the truth of God and remain fused to the person of God for ever and ever.

III: — Kings were anointed too.  Kings were anointed to rule. People today don’t like the sound of “rule”.  It sounds coercive, tyrannical, dictatorial, heavy-handed.  It sounds as if the king has colossal clout while subjects can only cower. Nobody wants to live under such an arrangement.

In Israel things were different. In Israel the first responsibility of the king wasn’t to boss (let alone tyrannize); the first responsibility of the king was to protect the most vulnerable of the people of God. Vulnerable people might be vulnerable on account of monetary poverty or social oppression or raging disease or military attack from outside the community; they might also be vulnerable on account of treachery from inside the community. Regardless of the source or nature or occasion of the vulnerability, the king’s first responsibility was always to protect those most at risk.

Some kings in Israel met their major responsibility.  Most didn’t. Little-by-little it appeared that the only king who would honour this mandate consistently would be the king who was also shepherd, a shepherd-king.  David was the shepherd-king in Israel ’s history. David defended the marginalized and vindicated the exploited and protected those at risk for any reason; in addition, in the course of doing all of this David brought glory to his people. At least David did this more consistently than anyone else.  But even David proved treacherous.

Little-by-little Israel came to see that God’s people were going to be protected, vindicated, and exalted conclusively only if a shepherd-king appeared who acted with the power of God himself. Then what was needed most was a shepherd-king – human, to be sure – who was also God Incarnate. And this is precisely what we were given at Christmas.

We are the people of God.  We need to be safeguarded. Since the world is a battleground of all sorts of conflicts, all of which are at bottom manifestations of the primal conflict, spiritual conflict, we are always at risk of becoming a casualty.

In military engagements casualties include the wounded, the missing and the slain. In the assorted struggles in which we find ourselves and must find ourselves we are going to be wounded from time-to-time.  But missing? How could any of God’s people be missing, unlocatable, when God-Incarnate is their shepherd-king? And slain?       Wounded as we are from time-to-time, God’s own people can never be wounded fatally. He who is our king, anointed such from eternity, is also resurrection and life.  Before God we can’t be slain and we can’t go missing.

We make far too little of this truth, for undeniably events overtake us where we feel we’ve gone missing, and gone missing just because no one seems to miss us. And events overtake us where we feel ourselves slain, unable to rise, unable to go on. But in fact we aren’t slain and we can go on. Our shepherd-king is resurrection and life.

When I was a young man and diligently reading the psalms because I’d been told I should read them, I used to grow weary of reading about the psalmist’s enemies.  In every third psalm we heard again the trouble his enemies were causing him and how treacherously they had bushwhacked him and how close they had come to vanquishing him. I began to think the psalmist paranoid.  But I see now that he wasn’t paranoid.  He was simply aware that nobody has life domesticated; nobody has life tamed; nobody has life under control, despite the fact that we’re all control-freaks. We can find ourselves clobbered on any day, from any quarter, for any reason (or no reason.) Life remains fragile.

Not so long ago I was asked to deliver a guest-lecture at the University of Toronto on John Calvin, progenitor of all English-speaking evangelicals.  When I had concluded, the questions came quickly.  The ultra-feminists in the audience tried to paint Calvin as anti-woman. I fended that off.  The Marxists tried to paint him as uncritical capitalist.  I fended that off. On and on it went.  Plainly the special interest groups were looking for some way to dismiss him.  Finally someone asked, “What is the lens through which Calvin views life?   Since all of us have a psycho-social determinant, what’s his?”

“Calvin was a refugee”, I replied; “and like all refugees Calvin knew that life is precarious, earthly rulers can’t be trusted, betrayal is always at hand; above all, Calvin knew that like refugees we are haunted by an outer and inner homelessness that will be overcome only in the eschaton.” The room fell silent. I understood why.  Everyone in the room identified with what I had just said about Calvin the refugee.

Because we are finite and fragile, we are physically vulnerable.  Because we are wounded, we are emotionally frayed.  Because we are sinners, we are spiritually “in a far country” and need to get home.

Who will get us home?   Who will safeguard us on our way home?   Who will ensure that our innermost core, our identity, remains intact? Only he who is shepherd-king, and effectual shepherd-king just because he is God-with-us, Emmanu-el, shepherd-king-Incarnate.

“Be not afraid”, we are told; “there is good news of a great joy, for to you there is born a Saviour who is Christ, the anointed one, effectual priest and prophet and king.” This one is Lord now, and ever will be.

                                                                                                         Victor Shepherd

Advent 2005

Luke 2:19

Do you remember when you were a child and you couldn’t wait until Christmas? My sisters and I counted the days. By Christmas Eve we were beside ourselves.  On Christmas morning when our parents finally gave us permission to get up, we children were down the stairs like the Kentucky Derby field leaving the starting gate.

There is a man, an old man now, whose anticipation of Christmas is as fresh as a child’s. What excites this old man isn’t the store-bought present wrapped in shiny paper; it’s the manger-born child wrapped in diapers.  The old man’s name is Martin Luther.   His Christmas exuberance is child-like.  No one in the church catholic glories in Christmas in quite the way that Luther does.

There is good reason for this.  Luther was no armchair spectator.  He was immersed in life. Life had whirled him up into ceaseless turbulence and conflict.  He was also immersed in Jesus Christ.  And Christ was that luminosity which loomed before him and seized him and leant him righteousness and resilience; a righteousness and resilience that allowed him to resist the deadly forces which otherwise spewed destruction wherever one looked.  When Luther spoke of temptation he didn’t mean titillating notions that lingered in one’s head like a catchy tune; he meant something so visceral, so gut-wrenching that even the strongest person shook. When Luther spoke of love, he didn’t mean benign sentiment; he meant the most passionate, self-forgetful self-giving. When Luther spoke of evil, he knew first-hand a horror as grotesque as it was terrible. Many people who are daintier than they should be are put off by Luther’s earthy language. They find it shocking. Do you know what he found shocking? – people who are so naive, so superficial, so clueless that they fail to understand that the world swarms and seethes and heaves. Luther knew that the world is the venue of a cosmic conflict which surges round and about, claiming victims here and there, while from time-to-time the front of this cosmic conflict passes right through your heart and mine.  When it does, only the earthiest language is adequate.

Everyone knows what Luther said at the famous confrontation in the city of Worms , 1521. “Here I stand.  I can do no other. I cannot and will not recant. God help me.” But few people are aware that he said this not in a spirit of petulant intransigence or puffed-up arrogance. He said this in anguish – anguish for many reasons, not the least of which was this: from that moment until the day he died, twenty-five years later, there was a price on his head. Even fewer people know what his opponent, Emperor Charles V, vowed in the face of Luther’s stand: “I have decided to mobilize everything against Luther: my kingdom, my dominions, my friends, my body, my blood, my soul.”   In other words, the opposition Luther would face for the rest of his life was total, relentless, and lethal.  And we find his vocabulary exaggerated and his delight in the Christmas gift childish? We should know what he knew: the world is a turbulent and treacherous place for any Christian in any era.

Creatures of modernity like you and me think we live in an ideational world. If we pass a motion at a meeting, we assume that a problem has been dealt with.  If the House of Commons passes new legislation, we assume that injustice has been rectified. We assume that to discuss a social problem dispels the problem.  We mull over different philosophies and compare them with “Christianity.” Luther didn’t speak of “Christianity;” he was possessed by the Christmas babe himself. He didn’t finesse theories of evil; he was confronted with powers of darkness so intense and so penetrating that either he looked to the One who is indeed victor or he unravelled.

I understand why Luther delighted in Christmas, why he looked forward to December 25th with a child’s tremulous longing.  Then what is it about the manger-gift that sustained the Wittenberger then and sustains us now?

I: — First, he who adorns the manger is the Son of God.  “Son of” in biblical parlance means “of the same nature as”. To behold the child who is Son of God is to behold the nature of God; or at least as much as can be beheld.  Luther didn’t dispute the truth that God is magnificent, mighty, (almighty, in fact); God is resplendent, glorious, incomparably so. Luther never disputed this. He also said that we never see it. The God whose majesty is indescribable is hidden from us. But Christmas celebrates not God hidden but God revealed.  And God revealed appears in the world as we are in the world: weak, vulnerable, suffering, bleeding.

The Nicene Creed says that “for us and our salvation the Son of God came down from heaven…”   Came down? Yes.  A condescension. Came down. Self-abasement.  Humility? Certainly.  Yet more than humility: humiliation.         There’s a difference.

It is wonderful that God humbled himself for our sakes; wonderful that he didn’t confine himself to his splendour but accommodated himself to us his creatures. Yet immeasurably more wonderful is it that for our sakes he knew not merely humility, but even humiliation. We read in the gospels that the detractors of Jesus hissed that our Lord was illegitimate. “Why should we heed — or even hear — a bastard like you?” they taunted contemptuously. When he died, the same people quoted the book of Deuteronomy: “Cursed is he who hangs on a tree.” “That proves it!” the head-waggers chattered knowingly, “We were right to shun him. He was cursed by God all along. What insight we had from the start!” Humiliation?   Crucifixion was a Roman penalty reserved for those deemed scum: military deserters, terrorists and rapists.  Jesus is lumped in withthatcrowd.

Then there’s the cry of dereliction, “Why have you forsaken me?” It’s the most anguish-ridden cry that Jesus ever uttered.  Yet since the Father and the Son are of the same nature, the cry of the Son’s dereliction is simultaneously the cry of the Father himself. It’s the cry of someone who has voluntarily undergone enormous wounding for the sake of those he holds dear. The cry of dereliction is really the cry of God himself over the pain of his torn heart, suffered for the sake of us whom he plainly loves more than he loves himself.

Not the hidden God (splendid, magnificent, majestic) but the revealed God (suffering, humbled, humiliated, slain;) only the revealed God can help us, said Luther. For only the revealed God has identified fully, identified himself wholly with the grief and guilt, turbulence and turpitude, conflict and slander and suffering that surround my life and yours.  Only this God is of any help to us.

Luther used to say that the most comforting words in all of scripture are the six words – what do you think the six most comforting words are? – of the preface to the Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord your God.” If we really understood these six words, he said, we should be invincible.  And who is the Lord our God?   The God of manger and cross who will go to any length to seize, save and secure those whom he has named his own.

II: — Yet there is more to the manger-gift. Not only is he Son of God, he is also son of Mary.  Jesus isn’t apparently human or seemingly human but actually human, fully human. “Tempted at all points as we are”, is the way the NT speaks of him.   The one Greek word, PEIRAZEIN, means tempted, tested and tried all at once.  Tempted, tested and tried like us but with this difference: he was never deflected in his human obedience, trust and love for his Father. He didn’t capitulate in the face of either the tempter’s threats or the tempter’s seductions.

Let’s talk about temptation for a minute.  We modern types always assume that temptation is primarily temptation to do something wrong, temptation to commit a misdemeanour, temptation to contradict a code. But in scripture temptation is primarily temptation to deny the goodness of God. First we deny the goodness of God; next we deny the goodness of God’s claim upon our obedience (his claim upon our obedience, is of course our blessing;) finally we spurn the claim and disobey him – as we violate him and thereby violate ourselves. It’s not that we have done something wrong; rather, we have cast aspersion on the goodness of God and the goodness of his claim; the bottom line is that we have violated our relationship with God even as we have violated our very own person.         It’s no wonder the Anglican Prayer Book reminds us, “And there is no health in us.”

He who is the son of Mary has been given to us as the one human being who doesn’t succumb to temptation; the one human being whose obedience to his Father is uncompromised, whose trust in his Father is undeflected, whose love for his Father is unrivalled by any other attachment. Then by faith I must cling to the Son of Mary, because my obedience is compromised a dozen times per day; my trust is fitful, and my love for God is forever being distracted by lesser attachments. The human response to God that I should make and even want to make has been corrupted, since I am a creature of the Fall.

Then of myself I can never render God the obedience and trust and love which befit the child of God. Nevertheless, there is provision for me: I can identify myself with the one whose human relationship to his Father is everything that mine isn’t.  In faith I can cling gratefully to the son of Mary.

In the last few years family-therapists have come to appreciate the damage sustained by adults who came from what are called “shame-bound families.” We’re speaking now of the adult whose childhood unfolded in a family where the all-consuming preoccupation was the deep, dark family-secret that had to be kept secret. If the secret were told, public shame would spill over the family.  Therefore any number of lies, evasions, and smokescreens were invented to cover up whoever it was in the family, whatever it was in the family, that threatened the family’s artificial reputation.   The adult child of the shame-bound family now finds herself guilt-ridden, fearful, inhibited.

To belong to the family of God is to be relieved of being shame-bound. In the Son of God God has identified himself with me completely; all that is or might be shameful about me God has taken on and absorbed himself. In the Son of Mary, on the other hand, I have identified myself with the man Jesus.  Whatever is genuinely shameful about me is taken up into the righteous humanness of Jesus himself. In his humanness he is the one with whom the Father is well-pleased.  In faith, then, I cling to him, and in him my shame is bleached and blotted out.

III: —  Lastly, the manger-gift is also the son of David.  When people hailed Jesus as the son of David they were recognizing him as the Messiah. David had been Israel ’s greatest king, despite his undeniable feet of clay.  David had valiantly tried to redress the injustices that pock-marked the nation. David was a harbinger, a precursor of the day when the just judge of the earth would no longer be defied and a topsy-turvy world would finally be righted.

Make no mistake. The world is topsy-turvy. A man who fails to hit a baseball seven times out of ten  is guaranteed ten million dollars per year for the next five years.  Meanwhile homemakers are selling daffodils on street corners because cancer patients needing treatment have been told that there’s a six-month waiting list for the equipment.  The public education budget increases every year – and so does the incidence of illiteracy. Please note: concerning illiteracy Canada has surpassed both the United States and Italy . Canada is now, per capita, the most illiterate nation of the west – and all of this despite unprecedented billions spent on public education.

Anyone who struggles, like King David of old, to redress the injustices of the world learns quickly how frustrating, absurd and heartbreaking the struggle can be. A friend of mine who administers a facility for battered women was invited to duplicate the facility in another municipality, simply because of that municipality’s need. (In other words, wife-beating shows no signs of going out of style.)   The institution she represents was offered free land by a developer.  She spoke to municipal civil servants as well as to elected representatives.  They promised to support her.  When a public discussion was called concerning the project, however, both municipal staff and elected representatives sniffed the political wind-direction and turned on her.  They didn’t merely withdraw the support they had promised; they faked surprise, as though they were hearing her for the first time, and then they denounced her, as though what she proposed (a facility for battered women) were antisocial and irresponsible and even patently ridiculous. (You see, a facility for battered women attracts creepy males as surely as a garbage dump attracts rats – so she was told.)   I saw my friend two days after the event.  She was still punch-drunk. She was shocked at the betrayal, the savagery, the greasy opportunism of it all. Luther wasn’t shocked at this. He was shocked at ignorant, fastidious people found his language shocking when he tried to address it.

The whole world cries out for the son of David, however inarticulately or unknowingly, just because the world cannot correct itself. As a matter of fact, the world is not getting better and better, however slowly.  Then is hopelessness the only sensible attitude to have?   Not for a minute. The manger-gift is the son of David, the Messiah promised of old, the royal ruler who will right the capsized world on that Day when he fashions a world in which righteousness dwells.

Then you and I must never capitulate to hopelessness.  Neither do we disillusion ourselves with naiveness.         Instead we faithfully, patiently, do whatever we can in anticipation of that Day when justice is done. And if what we do in anticipating this Day plunges us into even greater conflict for now, then our friend Luther will smile at us and say, “I could have told you that; I always knew that the appearance of Jesus Christ provokes conflict.”   And at such a time we shall have to find our comfort and cheer in that manger-gift, the child of Bethlehem , who made Luther’s eyes light up like a child’s on Christmas morning.

He who has been given to us is the Son of God, the son of Mary, and the son of David.

As the Son of God he is God humbling himself, even humiliating himself in seeking to save us.

As the son of Mary he renders the Father the proper human response that we should make but can’t, and therefore we must cling to him in faith.

As the son of David he is the long-promised Messiah who guarantees us a righted world in which righteousness will one day be seen to dwell.

                                                                         The Reverend Dr Victor Shepherd            

Advent II    7^th December 2008             
Church of St Bride, Anglican, Mississauga

Luke 2:41-52    Jeremiah 1:4-10    1 Samuel 3:1-10    

I: — It’s been almost a year since any of us saw NHL hockey played.  Does anyone miss it? I don’t. Frankly, I find little pleasure in watching hockey on TV.  I can watch it for about one period (usually the first), and by then I’ve had enough.

Do I find hockey on TV boring because I don’t like hockey?  On the contrary I’m fond of the game and played it for twelve seasons. I enjoy watching hockey – as long as I can see it “live”.  It’s televised hockey that I don’t enjoy watching.

Why don’t I like watching hockey on TV?   Because TV never shows us the game.  TV merely shows us the puck.         TV doesn’t show us the whole game being played; TV merely shows us the puck zipping here and there and back again.

There’s a difference between seeing the puck and watching the game. I know the difference just because I know hockey. I know, for instance, that the team which plays better when it doesn’t have the puck is the team that wins.       (You see, the better a team plays when it doesn’t have the puck, the sooner the team gets it back; and obviously a team can’t score unless it has the puck.) And so whenever I’m watching a game “live” I pay closer attention to the team that doesn’t have the puck. I know too that in order to win, a team has to be able to get the puck out of its own end of the rink in two crisp passes.  In the first five minutes of a game I note whether or not a team can do this. I know a great deal about the game of hockey because I’ve been watching hockey for years.

Yet there is a different kind of knowledge I have of hockey too.  I know what it is to be bodychecked so hard you feel you have been hit by a train at a level crossing. I know the exhilaration of “wiring” a shot that leaves the opposing goaltender motionless and flashes the red light behind him.  I know all this not because I watch hockey; I know all this because I played hockey.

The first kind of knowledge is “observer-knowledge”; observer-knowledge is gained through accumulating information.  The second kind of knowledge is “player-knowledge”; player-knowledge is gained only through participating.

There are obvious differences between observer-knowledge and player-knowledge. The most important difference, however, is often overlooked.  It’s this: the players determine the outcome of the game.  Only the players determine the outcome of the game; no observer, no spectator, ever has.

God says to the prophet Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I KNEW YOU; I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations”. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you”. God hasn’t known Jeremiah in the sense of observer-knowledge, always observing the man, always accumulating more and more information about Jeremiah.  God has known Jeremiah as a player, a participant in Jeremiah’s life, shaping the outcome of the prophet’s life.  God has known Jeremiah insofar as God himself has been involved in the unfolding of Jeremiah’s life — since when? since Jeremiah became a prophet? since he became an adult? since he was born?   No. God has been intimately involved, passionately involved, persistently involved since the day Jeremiah was conceived.

Today is Christian Family Sunday.  Today we are thinking particularly of children and parents together. We are thinking of the significance that children have for their parents, of the impact that parents make upon their children, of God’s incursion of parents and children together. One point we are going to stress in the service today is a point we have underlined several times already; namely, God has been a participant in the lives of our children from their conception and will continue to be this, for he has something for each to do.

As children grow up parents frequently scratch their heads and wonder (silently, I trust) what on earth is becoming of their child.   The future is uncertain; the child behaves in ways which parents find odd, even un-understandable. Worse than un-understandable, however, is behaviour that parents find heartbreaking whenever a youngster derails himself, and find infuriating since the youngster, despite superior intelligence, displays inferior wisdom. The parents are disappointed, anxious, angry and powerless all at once.  Now they have as little idea where their offspring is going to end up as they have of what precipitated the derailment.  It’s easy now to give up on the one whose birth brought such joy and promise one and one-half decades ago.

When this happens we must go back to Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and knew you not as a remote spectator high in the cheapest seats in the hockey arena, as far from the play as anyone can get. I knew you, rather, just because I was the single most intimate participant in your life — and still am”. That’s the point we have to take home: “and still am.”

We must never give up on our children.  We must never cease praying for them.  We must never think that because their future is unclear to them and to us they therefore have no future at all.  We must never assume that because we seem unable to reach them in some respects no one else ever will and God himself cannot.  Remember: Jeremiah wasn’t appointed to be a prophet the day he became a prophet. He was appointed to be a prophet the day he was conceived.  Between these two momentous days countless developments unfolded whose significance no one could guess; not Jeremiah himself, and certainly not his parents. And yet the single weightiest factor in Jeremiah’s life was the unidentified participation of God himself as the holy one of Israel shaped the youngster in a way no one could see for an end no one could foresee.

None of this is to suggest that as children grow up they need not come to faith, profess it boldly and confess it consistently.  Plainly they must. None of this is to suggest that their sinnership has been diluted one per cent.       Plainly it hasn’t, as parents and schoolteachers attest.  None of this is to suggest that as these infants grow up they are relieved of responsibility for who and what they are.  They are relieved of no responsibility at all.  But it is to say that the faith they are one day to profess and the obedience they are one day to render didn’t begin with them but began with the quiet work of the great infiltrator himself.

II: — Even as we admit that God is wonderfully at work in our children we must admit too that we adults are charged with discerning this; charged with discerning this and magnifying this. Eli discerned it, and so did Hannah. The story is one of my favourites. The boy Samuel is lying down, at bedtime, in the temple where he has gone to apprentice under Eli the priest. He hears his name being called, his very own name: “Samuel, Samuel”. He trots in to see old man Eli, who tells the boy that he, Eli, hasn’t called anyone.  It happens again. Finally Eli discerns that God is calling Samuel, calling Samuel for a work that remains hidden to them both.  We must note that it isn’t Samuel who is discerning; the text tells us that “Samuel did not yet know the Lord”.  It’s the old man who grasps what’s going on.

Hannah, Samuel’s mother, had grasped it first.  Hannah had wanted a child as she had wanted nothing else.       Each day brought her closer to menopause and closer to desperation.  Then it happened. She even named her child “Sam-u-el”: “His name is God”.  She meant, of course, that the child’s nature, the child’s character would be God-like in some respect.  Because Hannah had longed for this child so ardently, because he was the only child she was to have, did she clutch him to her, never let him out of her sight, treat him like an heirloom too precious to risk with the jarring and jostling which are the common lot? Did she mollycoddle him and smother him? No.  She sent him away from home, sent him to Eli where his spiritual formation would unfold. What made the wrench in Hannah’s heart bearable was her discernment that this step was necessary if her son was ever to exemplify the name she had given him: Sam-u-el. Wrench?  Terrible wrench. Every year she sent him a coat to replace the one he had outgrown.       Then he hadn’t stopped growing; he was very young.

It takes nothing less than Spirit-quickened discernment to grasp what God is doing in those who are growing up around us.  Eli had it. Hannah had it. My own father had it.  My father often intuited what was going on in my young head and heart; he saw that the ten-year old question I had asked him betokened far more than a child’s curiosity. On one occasion I had just learned the story of John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace”, slaveship captain whom the surge of God’s grace had finally rendered clergyman, hymnwriter, spiritual advisor without peer. I was perplexed about the justice of God’s mercy. My question wasn’t so much could God forgive someone who had trafficked in wanton cruelty as it was should God forgive such a person. My father saw the wheels turning in my ten-year old head.  He attempted an answer — somewhat convoluted — which I didn’t find convincing, and I told him so. He left off trying to answer the question directly and instead said gently, “Victor, he who was Newton ‘s saviour is my saviour too”. I got the point immediately. The expression someone’s sinnership takes may be socially reprehensible while the expression someone else’s takes is socially acceptable, even rewarded; nevertheless, all of us alike are sunk in sinnership to the same degree. All alike are the recipients of God’s condemnation, even as all alike are the beneficiaries of God’s mercy. I was aware that my father was as virtuous as Newton had been vicious; I was aware too, in my father’s comment, that on the Day of Judgement virtue and vice would count for nothing.  All that mattered then would be our response to a mercy as vast as it was undeserved. You will never hear anything else from this pulpit as long as I occupy it.  Only Spirit-quickened discernment — like that of Eli and Hannah and my dad — sees, laser-like, into the heart of the child and facilitates the spiritual formation of that child.

Samuel was still a growing boy when his mother at home and his mentor in the temple discerned the way and work of God within the child.  How important was the spiritual formation of young Samuel?   How crucial were his mother Hannah and his mentor Eli?  According to scripture Samuel is the last of the judges or elders in Israel ; Samuel is the first of the prophets.  Scripture maintains that Samuel is the greatest figure since Moses.  Towards the end of his life Samuel presciently anoints a boy, just a boy, in anticipation of this boy’s becoming Israel ’s greatest king: David.

You and I must understand that the spiritual formation of young people, in both home and church, is no small matter.

III: — The last episode we shall examine today has to do with Jesus.  Luke tells us he is twelve years old.  In ancient Israel a child became an adult at twelve. Jesus and his parents have gone to Jerusalem for Passover services. The services over, his parents set out for home, Nazareth , only to find that their son is missing.  Anxious and angry now, they trudge back to Jerusalem , find him stumping the theologians there, and tell him they are irked.       He replies, “Why do you have your shirts in a knot?       Isn’t this what I’m supposed to be doing?”

The seeds which his parents have been sowing for twelve years have borne fruit. The preparation for his later work, preparation which his parents have forged in him even though they have no idea what that “later work” is going to be; this preparation is finding its fulfilment in the twelve-year old, and will find even more dramatic fulfilment in the thirty-year old.       Our Lord’s parents, however, are slow to grasp it; slow to grasp the fact that their son’s vocational obedience is precisely what they have endeavoured to foster in him for years.  In first century Judaism a boy became a man on his twelfth birthday. The event in the temple that worries and irks the parents coincides with the child’s leaving childhood behind and stepping ahead in his adult vocation.

Our Lord’s parents, let me say again, are upset that their son, as the boy turns into a man; their son perplexes them and frustrates them.  Like all of us, from a psychological standpoint they have difficulty relinquishing control over their youngster.  Like all of us, from a spiritual standpoint they have difficulty understanding that their son mustdo what he’s doing if he’s to fulfil his Heavenly Father’s plan and purpose for him.

You and I should rejoice to see that day when our children, now grown up, are summoned to that work — and enter upon it — for which we have prepared them, under God, as best we have been able.  When it happens we mustn’t be at all surprised if the work to which God has appointed them isn’t what we had in mind; we mustn’t impede them in any way if the work to which God appoints them contradicts what we have always thought they should be about.       The truth is, every day in ever so many ways we are, under God, preparing our children for a work to which God will appoint them when all the while, every day, in every way, both we and our children have no idea what that work is going to be. Yes, I was raised in a home replete with Christian influences both overt and subliminal. Still, at no point did anyone ever sit down with me and have a man-to-man talk about the ministry. I had dozens of conversations with my dad, however, about lawyering. I went to university to study law, fell in love with philosophy, and am now Presbyterian minister in Schomberg.

My daughter Mary is fluent in French, and my daughter Catherine in Cantonese. If at some point Mary (B. Sc.N. graduate) tells me she’s been called to work in French-speaking Africa and Catherine back to China , there’s one response I mustn’t make: I mustn’t say, “Why do you have to go so far away? Doesn’t Mississauga need to be Christianized or healed?” I mustn’t say, “What’s more, if you go overseas and stay there who will look after your mother in her old age? How about a little consideration for her?” I had better not say this. If we have been genuine in the spiritual formation of our children; if through our discernment we have tried to foster the work of God’s Spirit within them, then we should rejoice to see all of this bear fruit even if it is fruit we never expected and now can’t understand.  I think we should even expect their discipleship to take them in directions which we haven’t anticipated and may not like.  After all, the only thing that matters for any of us is that we recognize God’s will for us and do it.

Several years ago when Maureen and I visited the Christian community on the Hebridean island of Iona, western reaches of Scotland, we learned of a seventy-year old member of the Iona Community (Church of Scotland) who was leaving for Latin America.  He had been a psychiatrist in Glasgow for years; soon he would be in El Salvador doing family-practice medicine. What response do you think the man’s announcement of this would bring forth?       I can see different people looking at him sideways and saying something like this:

His friends: “You can do as much healing amidst Glaswegian wretchedness as you can amidst El Salvadoran wretchedness, so why go half-way around the world?”

His medical colleagues: “You haven’t done family-practice medicine in years; what makes you think you can? It’s easier for a family-practitioner to do psychiatry than it is for a psychiatrist to do family-practice.”

His own physician: “You’ll get malaria or tapeworms or some such thing in two months and have to come home anyway.       Besides, you’re seventy years old.  Isn’t it time to hang up the stethoscope?”

His forty-five year old child: “Your grandchildren will miss you terribly, especially since you are their sole, surviving grandparent.”

But all of this is without force. All that matters, for any of us, is that we recognize God’s will for us and do it. We must pray every day that our children are going to do just this.  And when they do we hope our response will be better than that of Mary and Joseph.

Three children; or perhaps two children and an adult.  In any case Jeremiah reminds us that God has been engaged with little children from the day they were conceived. Young Samuel reminds us not so much of Samuel as of his mother Hannah and his mentor Eli, for these two discerned early in Samuel’s life what God was doing within the youngster.  The twelve-year old Jesus in the temple: he exemplifies emerging awareness of that vocation for which his parents have prepared him unknowingly even as they don’t understand it fully themselves.

God grant that the children in our midst will ever do as much for us as these three children have done for the world.  After all, these three the world will never forget.

                                                                                                   Victor Shepherd                                                                                                             

  May 2005

Luke 2:41-52

1] We must never undervalue or otherwise make light of the spiritual development of the very young. I can remember taking part in a Sunday School “night” before I had even started kindergarten; plainly the Sunday School “night” was important to me. I can remember weeping copiously, when only five years old, because I had forgotten my church offering; plainly not being able to worship God through my offering dismayed me.

When I became a parent I noticed a similar spiritual quickening in my own children. One day when she was only three our daughter Mary beamed at Maureen and me, “Daddy loves me; mommy loves me; Jesus loves me!” Because Mary was only three I didn’t ask her if she really grasped the hypostatic union of the two natures in the Incarnation; I didn’t even ask her if she grasped the consubstantiality of the persons of the Godhead. Nevertheless because she was only three I was thrilled to see signs of her spiritual awakening.

When children are as young as Mary was at that time they don’t digest huge slabs of theological meat; they don’t reflect upon conceptual complexities; they simply associate a word with an experience. Mary associated the word “Jesus” with the experience of being loved.

Simple as such an association is, it remains crucial. It’s crucial not only when we are very young but at any stage of life. Only a few days ago I was unusually upset; “distressed” wouldn’t begin to describe how I felt. Maureen came alongside me (metaphorically speaking) and said simply, quietly, “I’m your wife.” “Wife”. One word that was immediately associated with an experience spread over three decades; one word immediately associated with an experience of unparalleled intimacy and solace and help.

When three-year old Mary beamed, “Jesus loves me” she couldn’t have said anything about atonement or redemption or justification. But she had had an experience of her parents’ love; she had been told of Jesus’ love; and when she put the two together she indicated that the love of Jesus for her was more than a word.

Needless to say Mary’s “Jesus loves me” emerged from a context; it emerged from a consistent context. A repeated inconsistency in her parents’ love for her would have pre-empted the conclusion, “Jesus loves me.” Consistency generates the context, the atmosphere, in which the very young child’s spiritual development advances.

Plainly consistency is important. If the child is subjected to repeated inconsistencies between the words he hears and the experiences he undergoes, he will be confused; more than confused, wounded; more than wounded, spiritually arrested. If the child hears words about truthfulness, love, forgiveness, yet finds himself in an atmosphere that contradicts all of this, then he is a spiritually disadvantaged child.

Adults are disappointed when the person they trust acts in such a way as to contradict that person’s word and therein violates the trust. Children, however, aren’t disappointed; children are devastated. The truth is, adults are frequently devastated too. Where would I have been in my distress a week ago if Maureen had said, “I’m your wife” and I didn’t know whether that meant Jekyll or Hyde?

What counts in the spiritual formation of the very young child isn’t the handing over of reams of information; what counts is a consistent context, an atmosphere, where the child can associate a gospel-word with a vivid experience.

2] As children become older they move beyond merely associating word or name with experience; they move into a community of faith where they belong, where they have a part, where they see themselves to be essential.

The child’s “taste” of belonging can be very simple: the CGIT vesper service, the White Gift service, the junior choir, coming to the front of the church Sunday-by-Sunday for the children’s story. Simple as the act is, it anchors the child in the truth that she’s not alone in the Christian venture; she has companions on the Way. What’s more, since the desire to belong is deep in all of us (properly deep, rightly deep in all of us), and since it’s easy to fall into belonging to much that isn’t edifying and may even be degrading, it’s all the more important to belong to some feature of church life.

Several years ago when Gary and Cathy Clipperton returned from their year in Australia I asked Gary if he would provide leadership for the youth group. I shall never forget Gary’s reply: “I can organize them and supervise them, but I can’t `Christianize’ them.” I responded, “Just keep them together as a group and we’ll get them `Christianized’ some other way.” My daughter Catherine went to that youth group for five years. She would have walked on broken glass to get to the meetings. It didn’t bother me that she wasn’t being programmatically “Christianized” there. (Needless to say there was always an implicit “Christianizing” underway.) When Catherine began grade thirteen Mary began grade nine. I wondered if perhaps Catherine might prefer to be without Mary in the youth group. In fact Catherine always treated Mary generously and genuinely welcomed her to all the outings. I have always treasured that youth group (albeit “unchristianized”), for it invited my children to “belong” there. You see, as a pastor I deal every day with parents whose teenaged children belong elsewhere and can’t get pried away from the “elsewhere”. (If ever you doubt the fact and nature of the “elsewhere” where young people may belong, come with me to criminal court or family court.)

As children feel themselves to belong to the community of faith they begin to see that Christian existence isn’t merely an idea in the mind; it isn’t even chiefly an idea in the mind; it’s a way of life to be lived. Children begin to see that believing, belonging, and living are one.

Several years ago the confirmation class of our congregation had been admitted to church membership for only a week or two when the congregation had a congregational meeting to vote on the matter of making the church building wheelchair-accessible. The project would cost a great deal of money. Some people spoke in favour of the project, others against it. Just about the time the vote was being called the teenagers (church members for only a few weeks), trooped into the meeting en masse, sat down in a block in the first row, and voted as a block in favour of the project. Streetsville congregation stood tall that day, because not one older person remonstrated, “Why should they be voting when they aren’t going to be paying?” The younger people plainly belonged, and just as plainly reminded us older folk that believing, belonging and living are one.

3] As young people grow even older they enter yet another stage in their spiritual development: questioning. Everything has to be questioned, looked at from fifty different angles, disputed, probed, tested, contradicted, X-rayed, queried. And there’s nothing wrong with this.

In the confirmation class just concluded the liveliest discussions pertained not to doctrine (revelation, sin, repentance, etc.) but rather to disputed matters that are disputed just because the gospel collides with the world; just because gospel-understanding collides with the world’s self-understanding. For instance, the question was raised about Chinese Marxism (I had just visited China) and how a Marxist understanding of human nature differs from a Christian understanding of human nature. Soon a related question was voiced: how does a Marxist understanding of history differ from a Christian understanding of history? how does the Kingdom of God differ from a classless society? how does the lordship of Christ differ from the dictatorship of the proletariat? I readily understand why such topics intrigue younger people: these topics probe the most startling collisions in life. (Frankly, doctrine is not the most pressing matter for 16-year olds.)

I taught a grade 8 Sunday School class for two years. At that time I myself was in fourth year philosophy and then in my M.A. year. Our weekly Sunday School lessons had to do with the gospel of John. I had the teacher’s book; the youngsters had the student’s book. And they weren’t the slightest bit interested in the subtleties of John’s gospel. One day a bright boy in class pontificated all-knowingly that Sigmund Freud had pronounced all belief in God to be nothing more than the insecure person’s projection of wish-fulfilment. Immediately I pointed out to this fellow that all reductionist arguments cut both ways. If belief in God is nothing more than the wish-fulfilment of those who want God, then by the same argument atheism is nothing more than the wish-fulfilment of those who want to be rid of God. Freud dismisses all belief in God as the invention of the insecure? Why don’t we dismiss Freud’s atheism as the invention of the fearful who are afraid that God just might be and might even be God? All reductionist arguments cut both ways. Suddenly a light went on in the grade 8 class. We all agreed that such matters were far more fun than the intricacies of John’s gospel.

A week or two later a fellow whose parents had Marxist sympathies informed the class that all philosophy and all theology were nothing more than the self-serving rationalizations of the economically privileged, which rationalizations the economically privileged deployed to perpetuate their privilege. In other words, Marx had exposed the truth-claim for philosophy and theology as groundless. At this point I replied, “Has it ever occurred to you to subject Marx’s own philosophy to Marx’s critique of all philosophy? Has it ever occurred to you that according to Marx’s argument his understanding is nothing more than the self-serving rationalization of the economically disenfranchised — and therefore equally devoid of any truth-claim?”

For years I have known that Sunday School lessons aren’t nearly as exciting for teenagers as the collision between the Christian faith and the world’s contradiction of it.

Relentless questioning (including questions carefully designed to “stump” older adults); ceaseless disputes; outrageous disrespect for tradition; corrosive criticism of long-cherished assumptions: all of this is not only part-and-parcel of spiritual development, it’s necessarily part-and-parcel of spiritual development. For it is only as such queries are taken seriously that growing people mature.

4] When I speak of maturity I mean assured faith. I mean the settled conviction that the truth of Jesus Christ is just that: truth. I mean inward authentication that the Lord of the cosmos is mine because I am first his.

After people have emerged on the far side of protracted groping and guessing, anxious questioning and doubting disagreement; after people have moved beyond this they often tell us, “It all fell into place” or “Finally it clicked” or “At last I got the picture.” When people speak like this they are telling us that they are now convinced of the core of the gospel; and they are now possessed of assurance concerning their inclusion in it. They are convinced of the truth; they have been convicted of their spiritual need; and they can now confess with assurance the same faith that has captured the minds and hearts of Christians for centuries.

To be sure, more than a little has to be understood at this stage. We must understand who God is, why he incarnated himself in the Nazarene, how he can be known, why sin is sin and how faith differs from mere assent. Nevertheless, the emphasis at this stage isn’t on understanding; the emphasis is on settled conviction, assurance, care-free self-abandonment to the one we no longer doubt or dispute. At this stage we aren’t left hoping it might be true that God so loved the world as to give himself to the world in his son; at this stage we are exulting at the marvel that “he loved me; and gave himself for me!” (in the words of the apostle Paul.) At this stage we don’t have to be coaxed into worshipping or argued into praying or threatened into obeying. At this stage we simply unselfconsciously worship, pray, obey, do, love, rejoice, trust. At this stage it all comes naturally, for our new nature, true nature is that of the child of God.

This sort of maturity doesn’t mean that we are now a spiritual giant; it doesn’t mean that we’ve “arrived”; it doesn’t mean that we are superior. But it does mean that something huge and grand and glorious has been settled.

5] In everyday life we like to think that as we grow older we leave the younger boy or girl behind. When we are 30 we like to think the 13-year old is long gone. Psychologically, however, it isn’t true: our adolescence, even our childhood, is never far away.

Not only is it not true psychologically, it isn’t true spiritually either. Even when we are possessed of mature faith we still need to wrestle with perplexities and challenges and contradictions. Even when we are possessed of mature faith we still need to belong to the community of faith and learn afresh that believing, belonging and living are one.

And when we are very old and very mature in faith events will still howl down upon us and leave us needing the immediate comfort of the immediate association of word and experience: “Daddy loves me; mommy loves me; Jesus loves me.”

In our difficult days, on our tumultuous days, we need to be able to wander into the sanctuary on a Thursday afternoon, too upset to pray, and simply find ourselves comforted and edified and encouraged by whatever we associate with this building or its people or a word we’ve heard pronounced here or someone we’ve met here.

Jesus said that we must become like children if we are to enter the kingdom. The truth is, even as we mature in faith we must also remain children at the same time.

Spiritual development is a development that ultimately leaves nothing behind. Maturity, sophistication, reflection, settled assurance: these are certainly to be gained, even as our earlier ages and stages are never lost.

                                                                        Victor Shepherd      

May 1997

Luke 3:3-18      2 Kings 5:1-18   

I: — “Everyone should get done”, said the anxious mother to me. She meant, of course, that everyone should be baptized. Should everyone? And if perchance everyone should, why? Under what circumstances? To what end? The person whom we should consult concerning these questions is the man who had most to say about baptism, John the Dipper. “John” was his name, Yochan, “gift of God”. BAPTIZEIN was the everyday Greek verb meaning to dip or to dunk, as in “dip your paintbrush” or “dunk your doughnut.” “The baptizer, the dipper, the dunker” was the term hung on him by those who thought that John was the most ridiculous spectacle they had ever seen. Dressed in animal skins like Tarzan, living in the waterless wilderness where he hadn’t sat in a bathtub in years, possessed of a voice that ruptured eardrums, unmindful of the bee-stings acquired through gathering wild honey, John looked like a nature-boy who could have been locked up. He thundered that people needed to get right with God. A sign (but only a sign), a declaration, of their getting right with God was their plunge into the river Jordan. It was a public acknowledgement that the truth of the living God had pierced them to the heart and they wanted to drown their corrupt nature and henceforth live under God’s royal rule.

When the people did respond John didn’t smile with relief and say, “That’s more like it, that’s what I like to see.” Instead John looked at the hordes who were tripping over each other in their haste to get to the Jordan and raged, “Look at the snakes coming out! You can always tell when the underbrush catches fire; the snakes slither out in self-preservation! You people aren’t serious about God and his kingdom and his truth and his service; you don’t want to abandon yourself to him; you merely want fire insurance for the life-to-come: snakes bent on self-preservation!”

None the less, along with the superficial multitudes who weren’t sincere there were also those who were in earnest. John’s message had seared them: they did long for God and his kingdom, his truth and his service. They knew that John was preparing men and women for radical, rigorous discipleship. They knew that just around the corner was Jesus, John’s cousin, and Jesus would draw into his company the disciples whom John had prepared.

We shouldn’t belittle John’s work. The Jordan represented something serious. To be baptized in the Jordan meant that John’s convictions were your convictions. You were stating publicly that you and John were of one mind about the kingdom of God and the urgency of entering it and serving it.

What were John’s convictions? (i) His first conviction: false securities are useless. When John preached many people scoffed. They took refuge in their parentage or their piety or their privilege.

First, their parentage: “We don’t need to repent. We have Abraham as our father”, they threw back in John’s face. “Why talk about Abraham’s blood-line?”, John replied, “What alone counts is Abraham’s faith.” Did you know that my great-great-grandmother was a missionary in China? So what! It won’t do anything for me and I shouldn’t put any stock in it.

Next they tried to hide behind their piety: “We are extra-careful about religious observances”. (This is piety talking.) But what is the virtue in outward conformity to a pious code if inwardly there is lacking that whole-souled, single-minded self-abandonment to the living God?

Lastly they sought refuge in privilege (parentage, piety and privilege): “We belong to Israel. We don’t belong to the pagan nations who wouldn’t know God from a gopher. We belong to a religious tradition over a thousand years old. And not only is our tradition old, it embodies the truth of God”. “Substituting a tradition for intimate acquaintance with God himself”, countered John, “is like reading a handbook on lovemaking and assuming you are therefore married.”

The false securities of parentage, piety and privilege are useless. We must own for ourselves the forgiveness that God has fashioned for us, or remain unpardoned. We must exercise the faith that God has given us and by which we are bound to him, or remain forever estranged from him. Moment by moment we must resolve to obey the One who insists that obedience is freedom, or else languish in bondage to our sin. John’s first conviction: false securities are useless.

(ii) John’s second conviction: the sincerity of our profession is indicated by the consistency of our discipleship. When tax-collectors told John that they wanted to be immersed in the Jordan as a public sign of their seriousness John said, “If you are as serious as you say you are then you will stop cheating the people from whom you are collecting taxes.” When soldiers asked for baptism — “If you really mean it then you will stop molesting civilians and stop extorting protection money from them”. When the multitudes streamed to the Jordan John explained, “Before you get wet you must understand that to take the plunge is to pledge yourself and everything you own to needy people.”

Then, only then, John welcomed all who responded to his preaching and baptized them, exuberantly, in the Jordan.

II: — Yet there is more to the Jordan. Jesus was baptized there too. Unlike the people who responded to John, however, Jesus wasn’t publicly declaring a change in life-style. He had no need to change anything. When Jesus stood in the Jordan he was endorsing everything that cousin John was about; but he was also doing more. He was inaugurating his own ministry. Thereafter all whom Christ called into his company and were baptized as he had been were owning their ministry. In other words, for Jesus and his followers too, baptism is ordination to ministry.

To be sure different Christians have different ministries. Your ministry and mine differ in several respects. Yet underlying the many differences there forever remains a commonality that we must own together. The commonality arises, of course, in that the ministry of every Christian is generated from the ministry of Jesus Christ. He is the “great high priest”, in the words of the book of Hebrews. You and I in turn are that “royal priesthood” of which Peter speaks. His ministry is intercession in behalf of a tormented world. In Israel the ministry of the priest is intercession. Since we are a royal priesthood generated by the great high priest himself, our ministry too can only be a ministry of intercession in behalf of a tormented world.

One Monday not so long ago the telephone rang once more. The caller was a minister-friend. His wife was having an affair with a colleague at work. As you’d expect, the more intense the affair became, the more icily she treated her husband and the more distant from him she rendered herself. When my minister-friend phoned he had just returned from tests at Princess Margaret Hospital. He had been treated for cancer some time ago, had undergone surgery, and then appeared to be “out of the woods.” The day he phoned me was the day that the most recent tests indicated there was a new growth on another organ. Naturally he concluded it was malignant. He stumbled home from the hospital and told his wife. She stared at him with unblinking iciness, said nothing, and walked away. I can’t imagine a silence any more cruel, just as I can’t imagine isolation more isolated.

The intercession of Jesus Christ is a major motif in the New Testament. The apostles know that our Lord has fused himself to all humankind in solidarity with us. One with us all, he lifts up before his Father every last sinning, suffering human being. The ministry of the Christian is intercession too. Which is to say, our ministry consists of fusing ourselves to those whose lives intersect ours, in order that they might know their sin can’t deprive them of our compassion, know they are never alone, know their pain isn’t unnoticed, know themselves cherished.

No sooner was I finished with my long telephone call when the phone rang again. This time it was a paranoid fellow, one of the many deranged who look to me and of whom I am fond. This fellow suffers terribly. After all, it’s dreadful to live in constant fear of assassination. In the course of our chit-chat he told me he had to get up to the toilet several times during the night. Now since he is a middle-aged male you don’t have to be a medical genius to know what his problem is. I told him I would make sure a urologist saw him. “Urologist!”, he raved at me, “What good’s a urologist when someone is poisoning my orange juice?”

This past July Maureen and I visited our friend Louise in Montreal. She is schizophrenic. She isn’t deranged like the fellow whose orange juice is forever being poisoned; she’s closer to normal mental functioning than that. Still, she’s ill, and she suffers. One fine summer day two months ago she piloted us to the eastern townships, 90 minutes’ drive from Montreal, to Lake Memphramagog. (I was delighted to visit the lake for many reasons, two of which were the beautiful scenery and the fact I’d read so often about the lake in the writing of Mordecai Richler.) Louise has been a dear friend for 17 years, ever since we met in 1982 in La Pocatiere.

To be sure, it’s often inconvenient and often wearing to keep company with mentally ill people. At the same time, it’s often instructive. Ill people tend to lack the social niceties, the insincerity that passes for diplomacy. They don’t have the social duplicity that sane people can no longer recognize as duplicity. They’ve forgotten the social conventions that keep you and me (I’m assuming now that you and I are sane) insisting publicly that the emperor is magnificently attired when everyone knows he has no clothes and only very young children and very ill adults blurt out the truth, and blurt out the truth just because they lack the social skill of how to be false. In this regard we must always remember G.K. Chesterton. Mentally ill people, said Chesterton, haven’t lost their reason; they’ve lost everything except their reason.

Then what does intercession mean for all such? That we pray for them? Of course we shall. Praying for them is also the easiest — and the cheapest — expression of intercession. Then what other expression does our intercession for them take? What do we do for people who can’t defend themselves? What do we do for people who suffer extraordinarily? If you can’t imagine what “intercession” might entail, think of “intervention.”

Baptism in the Jordan is a public declaration that we have been called into the service of our Lord whose intercession in behalf of all sufferers is relentless.

III: — Yet the Jordan means even more. It means not only that we are going to minister, but also that we shall allow ourselves to be ministered unto; and allow ourselves to be ministered unto even if this entails our being humbled — or perhaps humiliated. The Jordan is the river into which Naaman must plunge himself if he’s to be healed. Naaman is the five-star general of the Syrian army that has overrun Israel. He’s also afflicted with leprosy, and he finds his affliction humiliating. An Israelite girl, a prisoner of war, is his wife’s attendant. The Israelite girl tells Mrs. Naaman that Elisha, the Israelite prophet, can cure her husband. Naaman is humiliated again. He, the commander-in-chief of a victorious army, has to appear cap-in-hand and submit himself to a fellow from the conquered people? But leprosy is no trifling matter; Naaman swallows his pride and appears before Elisha. Soon he’s not merely humiliated, he’s disgusted: Elisha has told him that he must bathe seven times in the Jordan. The Jordan then was as filthy as Toronto’s Don river is today. Seven times in that fetid pollution? Surely seven times into the Jordan would leave a man with afflictions worse than leprosy! Vehemently Naaman objects, “Why can’t I bathe in the clear, clean waters of my native Damascus? Why can’t Elisha simply call on the name of his God and wave his hand?” But Elisha is adamant: “Seven times into the Jordan, General Naaman, or leprosy for life.” Naaman added it all up. If it had to be the Jordan, then the Jordan it would be.

My first summer placement as a student minister was a frontier town in northern British Columbia that had recently been inundated with construction workers. On my last Sunday in town before returning to Toronto for seminary I preached on faith. I thought it was a good sermon. After the service a man who had attended worship throughout the summer approached me. He was an alcoholic who had been contentedly sober for several years. He looked me in the eye with a look that was all-searching and all-knowing and said quietly, “Victor, faith is serenity.” From his look I knew that he thought he had detected non-serenity in me. He thought I was prone to agitation, prone to vehemence, prone to flare-ups, prone to roller-coaster mood-alterations, prone to knotting my shirt on short notice! I looked him back, trying to say through my look, “Mister, you’ve got me wrong.” It didn’t work. He smiled again and said, “Victor, faith is serenity.” And then I bristled. After all, I was a theology student and I had forgotten more doctrine than he would ever know; and besides, by vocation I was his spiritual superior, wasn’t I? What’s more, he was so weak (“weak” is how I thought of it in those days, to my shame) that he’d never be able to take a drink again without going haywire. And he was correcting me? And then I recalled the word of Elisha: “Either the Jordan, or your affliction for life.”

It has happened to me a dozen times since then, and will continue to happen, since I am not yet fully healed.

I want to come back to the question I left with you at the beginning of the sermon. Should everyone be “done”? Should everyone be baptized? Anyone be baptized if the water in which we are baptized is the Jordan. For the Jordan means

(i) we are abandoning ourselves to a discipleship so far-reaching as to be unmistakable and undeniable,

(ii) we are accepting ordination to a ministry of intercession in behalf of suffering people,

(iii) we are submitting to a correction and a restoration that entails humility, even humiliation, but without which we shall never be healed of our affliction.

Parents have brought their children for baptism today. This means the parents are promising to do everything they can to have their children one day own “the Jordan” for themselves.

You and I are witnesses to all of this; but not witnesses only. Even less are we idle bystanders. You and I are those who were baptized ourselves, whether as infants, adolescents or mature adults. Then the question we must ask ourselves is this: the water in which we were baptized, was it the Jordan? After all, it’s the Jordan, and only the Jordan, that matters.

                                                                        Victor Shepherd

September 1999

Luke 3:3-20

I: — My appetite does not improve when I see a crow pecking at a dead animal on the side of the highway. And if perchance a crow were to drop a bit of ragged roadkill in my lap I should be repulsed. Elijah the prophet was told (who told him?) to hunker down by the brook Cherith which flows into the Jordan and crows would feed him there. Feed him what? Everyone knows what crows eat.

Elijah looms out at us from the Hebrew bible as a man who is utterly God-saturated. Over and over we are told, “The word of the Lord came to Elijah…”, and off Elijah goes to do and say what has been laid on him. Today we should find many different ways of speaking of him. He was God-soaked — for the text explains him entirely in terms of the God who has inundated him. He was humble — for it takes more than a little humility to allow oneself to be fed carrion. He was courageous — for it takes enormous courage to speak truth to power, particularly when the political power (King Ahab and his cruel wife Jezebel) is murderous. He was unpolished — for subtlety and soft speech were foreign to him. Most notably he was impassioned. Wherever we find Elijah his passion is aflame: his preaching, his praying, his scorn, his rage, his dejection; it’s all a firestorm. Moderation? Elijah never heard of the word. Balance? The “golden mean”? He wouldn’t understand. We wonder why Elijah is always and everywhere afire; he wonders why we appear not to be lit.

The greatest of the Hebrew prophets, according to Jewish opinion both ancient and modern, Elijah was God’s spokesperson in the face of the Baalism which surrounded Israel and threatened to infiltrate it. Baalism had several aspects to it. It was nature-worship, and nature worship (both ancient and modern) conveniently lacks any grasp of evil or sin. Nature-worship will always attract the hordes who want religious sentimentality without ethics. Not surprisingly Baalism tolerated, even encouraged, lasciviousness of all sorts.

King Ahab, an Israelite who knew exactly what God meant when God insisted that he is a “jealous” God (God abides no rivals; worship of him cannot be mixed with worship of anything else); Ahab nevertheless thought he could have his cake and eat it too. Why not mix Baal, the pagan deity, and Yahweh, the true and living God, together? Why not have the self-indulgence which Baal permits his people and the security which Yahweh promises his people? Why not the fornication which Baal laughs about and the forgiveness which Yahweh weeps to bestow? Why not? Don’t the television preachers tell us repeatedly that God wants us to “have it all”? Don’t the television preachers tell us repeatedly that we can have all the “goodies” of the world together with the gospel of God?

Elijah rightly says, “No, a thousand times no!” And so we find Elijah, the prophet of God, standing amidst the 450 prophets of Baal. “The Holy One of Israel”, Elijah says to them, “will shortly expose your Baal for the inconsequential puff of smoke that it is. And as for you, Ahab, so far from being a real king you are a double-crosser; you have betrayed the very people whose spiritual protector you were commissioned to be.” Whereupon Ahab stabs his finger at Elijah, “You troubler of Israel ; why do you have to be such a disturber?”

Jewish people always knew that Elijah, the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, would come back. He would come back at the end-time when the kingdom of God was breaking in on the world; he would come back when what all Israel called the “Age to Come” was dawning as it superimposed itself on what Israel called the “Present Evil Age”. Elijah would surely come back. And when he came back, ancient Jewish people insisted, he would do four things. He would restore the people inwardly through repentance; he would gather together the scattered people of God; he would proclaim salvation; and he would introduce the Messiah.

Centuries later John the Baptist appeared. John didn’t eat carrion brought to him by crows; he ate honey made for him by wild bees, with grasshoppers added for protein. John too spoke truth to power, even lethal political power — just as Elijah of old had. This time it wasn’t king Ahab; it was king Herod, a Jew in name only who had sold his soul to pagan Romans and now betrayed the very people whose spiritual protector he had been commissioned to be. And just as Elijah had ringingly denounced Ahab’s theft of Naboth’s vineyard, so John denounced Herod’s theft of his brother’s wife.

John had an elemental message which he declared tirelessly. “Repent. Right now. Don’t say, ‘Tomorrow’. You don’t have tomorrow. The axe is laid to the root of the tree now; it is the height of spiritual stupidity to think that the tree itself is going to last until tomorrow. Get right with God now. How will anyone know if your repentance is genuine? By the subsequent shape of your life. Will baptism in the Jordan (or anywhere else) save you? No it won’t. For unless your life is reordered before God, getting yourself baptized in desperation is no different from a snake slithering away in panic from a grass fire.”

And then John began gathering together the scattered people of God. After all, he urged repentance even upon soldiers, and they, despised gentiles as they were, were yet added to the “household and family of faith”. In the same breath John proclaimed the salvation brought by his cousin, Jesus, whose shoelaces John felt himself unworthy to untie. Did he introduce the Messiah? Repeatedly John urged the people, “Don’t look at me; look at him. He is the one to baptize you with the fiery Spirit of God!”

Months later the detractors of Jesus taunted him, “You can’t be the Messiah. Everyone knows that Elijah must come back before the Messiah can appear. And Elijah hasn’t returned for 800 years!” “Wrong again”, said Jesus to his detractors, “you are dead wrong. Elijah did come back. He came back recently. And you made fun of him. You called him names: ‘the dunker, the dipper’. Elijah did come back. And you dismissed him. Didn’t John urge repentance, gather the scattered people of God, declare the salvation of God, and introduce the Messiah?”

Today is Advent Sunday. We are preparing ourselves to receive (or receive afresh) him who is the Messiah of Israel and the saviour of the world, him who is nothing less than Emmanuel, God-with-us. Yet we can properly receive him only as we first admit that the Messiah can’t be known without the reappearance of Elijah, only as we admit with our Lord himself that John the Baptist is Elijah given to us once more. Which is to say, we can receive the Christmas gift himself only as we first hear the forerunner’s word and take it to heart and do it. The single forerunner of the Christmas gift is Elijah and John compressed into one. Let us hear our Lord Jesus once more: we can receive him who is the Christmas gift (our Saviour) only as we first hear and honour the word of the forerunner, Elijah and John compressed into one.

II: — Elijah was Israel ’s greatest prophet; David its greatest king. Many generations later David’s descendants gave birth to the Son of David, Jesus our Lord. David and Jesus were even farther apart temporally than Elijah and John: one thousand years separated David and his Son. Yet they had much in common.

They both came from simple country-folk; David and Jesus, that is.

They both gained notoriety when they were still adolescents: David as a shepherd boy who accidentally “showed up” older men when they would not respond to Goliath’s challenge, Jesus as a 12 year old who stymied learned clergy in the temple.

They both possessed enormous backbone, neither one a pushover, neither one cowering before brute power. When David saw the terror which had paralyzed his countrymen in the face of the Philistine threat David scornfully said of the Philistine leader, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” When Jesus knew that Herod wanted to terminate him Jesus scornfully said to whoever would listen, “Go and tell that fox”, when “fox”, in first century Middle Eastern street-talk was shorthand for the most loathsome “creep” imaginable.

They both showed mercy to their enemies: David, when he knew Saul wanted to kill him and he had Saul helpless yet let him go, Jesus when he prayed at the last, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”

They both were men of passion. When David exulted without restraint “before the Lord” his wife, Michal, despised him for it. When the passion of Jesus fired his public ministry and rendered him heedless of danger his mother thought him deranged and wanted to take him home and sedate him.

They both were fighters, and both declined the weapons which everyone else assumed they ought to use. David was offered Saul’s armour, but put it aside, trusting a simple slingshot and the use God would make of it as God honoured the one who had first placed his trust in his Father. Jesus, summoned before Pilate, told Pilate that he, Jesus had at his command legions of angels whose unearthly power could have vapourized Pilate on the spot, together with everything Pilate represented. Instead Jesus trusted a simple cross and the use his Father would make of it as his Father honoured the one who had first placed his trust in his Father.

Both David and Jesus were born to be king. David was born in Bethlehem , a village outside Jerusalem . ” Bethlehem ” means “house of bread”. One thousand years later Jesus was born in Bethlehem too. Both were born to be king.

What was an Israelite king supposed to do? I say “supposed to do” since most Israelite kings didn’t do what a king was supposed to do. Instead they lined their pockets and slew their opponents. David was different. David knew that an Israelite king had three responsibilities. The king was to protect the people, uphold justice, and serve as a priest.

David did protect the people. In fact David was a military genius, like the Duke of Wellington or Ulysses S. Grant.

David did uphold justice. Justice today means little more than seeing that criminals are convicted and sentenced. Not so with that justice which God decrees. As a matter of fact there is no Hebrew word for justice; the Hebrew word is “judgement.” The king was to uphold God’s judgements just because the king was the agent of God’s judgements. And God’s judgement is not primarily a matter of convicting criminals and sentencing them. God’s judgements, scripture attests over and over, are God himself setting right what is wrong; freeing those who are enslaved; relieving those who are oppressed; assisting those who are helpless; clearing the name of those who are slandered; vindicating those who are despised. David did this. Those who had been set upon were set upon no longer. Anyone who “fleeced” the defenceless or exploited the powerless learned quickly that king David had zero tolerance for this sort of thing. When David himself was fleeing Saul’s murderous hatred 400 men and their families gathered around David, “Everyone who was in straits and everyone who was in debt and everyone who was desperate.” To be desperate is literally to be without hope; to be in straits is to have no way out, no escape. All such people found in this king one who would never disdain or ignore or abandon them.

And priest? The role of the priest was to intercede with God on behalf of the people. Frequently David went into the tabernacle “and sat before the Lord”; that is, he had his people on his heart, and pleaded with God for them all.

One thousand years after David a blind beggar minutes away from receiving his sight called out to Jesus, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” “Son of David”. It meant “messiah.” The messiah was to be a great king, greater even than David. A blind man who could see what supposedly sighted people couldn’t see knew Jesus to be the long-awaited king greater even than David.

The protection which Christ the king gave his people — continues to give them — is more glorious than any protection David furnished, for Christ our king has promised that nothing will ever snatch you and me out of his hand; nothing will ever separate us from that love of God made concrete in the king himself.

That Son of David who is Christ the king upholds justice as he implements God’s judgements. Jesus himself has said that all judgement has been delivered over to him. And since the primary purpose of judgement is to restore the right, to say he is judge is to say that he is saviour. If the primary purpose of the judge is to set right anything that is wrong, anywhere, from the sin of a child to the disfigurement of the cosmos, then the judge has to be the saviour as well.

And priest? In his atoning sacrifice Christ the king uniquely pleads with the Father on behalf of the people. For this reason the book of Hebrews speaks of Christ the king as “our great high priest”.

All of which brings us to the last point concerning David and David’s greater son: the matter of sin. Here their paths diverge. The New Testament tells us that Jesus was “tempted at all points as we are, yet without sin”. David, it can safely be said, was also tempted at all points; but he sinned grievously. He lusted after Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife. His lust warped his thinking. Adultery-on-the-way rendered murder perfectly reasonable. David didn’t merely stumble; he sprawled, sprawled shamefully. Everyone knew it.

A few days later, as David slunk out of Jerusalem (or tried to slink out), a man named Shimei walked on the other side of the street, cursing David and throwing stones at him. (No doubt the stones were a not-so-subtle reminder that the law of Moses prescribed stoning for adultery.) Abishai, David’s loyal friend, was outraged that the king should be insulted like this. “Why should this dead dog curse the king?”, cried Abishai, “Let me take his head off!” “No”, replied David sadly, “No. Shimei curses me only because God has told him to. The treatment Shimei accords me is no worse than I deserve.” David was publicly humiliated, yet refused to flee his humiliation inasmuch as his public humiliation was the God-ordained consequence of his sin.

King David’s greater son didn’t flee his public humiliation either. Jesus was “numbered among the transgressors”. He was assigned that death — crucifixion — which the Romans reserved for insurrectionists, deserters and rapists; that is, reserved for those whose disgrace could not be greater. Jesus refused to flee his public humiliation inasmuch as his humiliation was the God-ordained consequence not of his sin but of his sin-bearing righteousness. The apostle Paul, as so often, says it most compactly: “He who knew no sin was made sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

The Christmas announcement to the shepherds in the field was plain: “Don’t be afraid. Good news! Great joy! For to you is born in the city of David a saviour who is Christ the Lord.”

The city of David is Bethlehem , “house of bread”. And in the house of bread is born David’s greater son who is himself the bread of life. Then this one, given to us anew at this season, we must receive anew, for he is saviour inasmuch as his humiliation is his invitation to us to become that righteousness of God which we need as we need nothing else.

Elijah, David, John, Jesus. The Christmas story begins in a lowly cattle shed, once upon a time, in royal David’s city.

                                                                                                   Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                        
Advent 2003

Luke 5:1-11

I: — Sunday attendance at mainline churches in Canada peaked in 1965. Turn-outs have decreased every year since then.  There is no suggestion the trend is about to change.  Our society is vastly more secularized than our foreparents could ever have imagined. There is now an entire generation of young adults who have no “Christian memory”; that is, they weren’t taken to Sunday School, were never exposed to worship, have grown up without any instruction in elementary Christian truths, and are wholly ignorant of the Bible.

Today teachers of English literature must assume that their students are unable to recognize the biblical allusions that saturate English literature. Only a few years ago the hardest-bitten atheist still spoke of being “a good Samaritan”. The mother who was alienated from the church still longed for the return of her “prodigal”. Even the sportswriter bemoaned the team owner’s “crucifixion” of the coach.

The Roman Catholic Church still controls (largely) public education in the province of Quebec . And the result?         Sociologists tell us that Quebec is the most thoroughly secularized region of North America; sociologists tell us too that Quebec children grow up hating the church that educated them.

Of course we shake our heads nostalgically when we read in the first verse of the gospel lesson that the crowds “pressed upon Jesus to hear the Word of God”. “Crowds”, “pressed upon” – it all recalls St.James United Church , Montreal , in the 1930s when the preacher was Lloyd C. Douglas.  He was writing such bestselling novels as Magnificent Obsession and The Robe.  The sanctuary at St.James seats 3,600.  It was full twice a Sunday. Today 35 people gather for worship.

The process of secularization continues.  It appears there’s nothing we can do in the face of it.

And yet there is something we can.  Like Peter we can “put out into the deep”.  (Peter is spokesperson for the group of disciples throughout the gospels. Peter represents them all.) In obedience to the command of Jesus he moves out to greater depths.

In a secular age the church must understand that shallowness attracts few; it even puts people off.  We haven’t always been aware of this.  For decades we borrowed the world’s agenda unthinkingly.  We conformed to what we assumed was expected of us, and conformed inasmuch as we thought that making ourselves “relevant” would render us effective. When the human potential movement came along (Sensitivity Groups, Transcendental Meditation, Transactional Analysis, even the bizarre notion that preaching is group therapy) we co-opted it uncritically.  We assumed that the world’s wisdom (which was often anything but wise) equalled the truth and reality of the Kingdom of God . We used a biblical vocabulary without really grasping the force of the words. We recited liturgies while unaware that liturgy is the theatricalization of that singular Word which is “sharper than any two-edged sword”.         In it all we failed to grasp something crucial: the gospel is by nature a counter-cultural movement.  The gospel contradicts the world’s self-understanding.  The church isn’t needed for the public to know the public is thinking; the public knows this already.  The church is needed, however, if the society is to be acquainted with the truth and wisdom, the purpose and persistence, of the God whose depths are fathomless. In a secular society the church will prove profoundly winsome only as the church embodies what the wider society can’t give itself.

We mustn’t think that our Lord’s command to “go deeper” means that credibility for the church and its message will be restored immediately. There won’t be an instant turn-around. It was for good reason that Jesus called the first leaders of his church from the ranks of fishermen. Fishermen, after all, are those whose everyday work acquaints them with failure, disappointment, scanty returns, hardship; the occasional bonanza, to be sure, but also much drudgery and more than a little danger.  This is the fisherman’s lot.

I learned of the rigours of commercial fishing when I was posted to a seacoast village upon ordination.         Lobster, cod and mackerel were fished in boats with three feet of freeboard on the sides when frigid North Atlantic waves were ten feet high. Those who fished smelt used a chain saw to cut a slot in the winter ice thirty feet long, two feet wide, and as deep as the ice was thick (five feet).  These men dropped a weighted net into the slot and then pulled it up several hours later. Smelt have to be fished on the change of tide: 2:37 a.m. , 4:15 p.m. , 3:10 a.m. , and so on. For only pennies per pound these fellows endured constantly interrupted sleep and 75 kilometre per hour winds blowing off the North Atlantic at temperatures of minus 40 degrees.  One night a salmon fisherman (a night’s fishing cost 200 litres of gasoline) hooked onto an 800 pound tuna.  Excitedly he brought it ashore and spent hours removing head and entrails and skin — only to be told that mercury contamination might be unacceptably high in a fish that large.  A Federal Fisheries officer confiscated it.  The fisherman (a financially needy person with eight children to feed) was heartbroken. Do you know what he did next night? He put back to sea and fished again.

When Jesus called the twelve he could have called dreamers, visionaries, political sophisticates, academicians, or even religious experts. These people were all available. Instead he called those whom hardship, disappointment, fatigue and undeflectable persistence had already prepared for the greater work ahead of them.

In obedience to Jesus Christ Peter “goes deeper” and lets down the nets, despite the fact that at face-value Christ’s command was silly because futile.  It was daytime, and everyone knew that fish in Gennesaret (or Galilee ) were caught at night – and caught as well as in shallower water.  Yet Peter obeys even when his obedience invites failure.

But then Abraham had obeyed when the sacrifice of Isaac would have meant the failure of the very promise of God which sustained Abraham: “Your descendants shall be as numberless as the sands of the seashore.” Moses had obeyed the command to lead even as he knew that his appearance and manner engendered failure. (How much leadership could a public figure exercise today when afflicted with a disability like stuttering?)   Naaman had obeyed — “Bathe in the filthy river” — when to do so meant he would fail to find the cleansing he craved.

In the midst of a secularized age which writes off the church and its message Christians must do three things.         One, we must go deeper. The day of attracting people through superficiality, obsolete sentimentality, or ridiculous attempts to be “with it”; this day is gone. Two, we must recover and then hold up the irreducible, irreplaceable truth and substance of the gospel even when it’s the gospel that is ignored, even when it’s the church’s preoccupation with the gospel that appears to guarantee the church yet greater marginalization and embarrassing failure.  Three, we must do all of this with the patience, resilience and persistence of fisher folk who don’t quit despite scanty returns, relentless hardship and ineradicable risk.

Only as we do this will we know ourselves to be precisely what our Lord has appointed us to be: fishers of men and women.  Only as we hold all three together will the day come once again when the gospel is cherished for what it is: the power of God unto that salvation which everyone needs in any era.

II: — In the story we are probing the disciples obey Jesus and immediately are met with what appears to be startling success: they had fished in vain, now they are inundated with fish.  Yet Peter responds in a manner that startles us: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man”. Peter knows that there’s nothing in him that merits what his Lord has just done. The miracle he has witnessed isn’t a reward for any secret virtue that he possesses.  He knows that the magnificent fruitfulness which has attended his obedience is the sheer gift of God.  It humbles him. The holiness of God highlights Peter’s depravity, and he can only confess himself to be sinner, deep-down sinner, through-and-through sinner.

Not so long ago a man informed me exuberantly that he would have given everything to have been with Moses on Sinai when God spoke to Moses and gave Moses the Ten Words.  But of course the man wouldn’t have been thrilled at all; he would have been terrified. Everywhere in scripture fear engulfs the people before whom the all-holy God has loomed. (We need only read Luke’s Christmas stories to see that throat-drying fear accompanies every development even in the gift of him who is unqualified blessing.)   This fear isn’t a sign of a craven spirit or a fragile ego, never mind a neurosis. It’s a sign of that uncommon spiritual depth which finally recognizes the horror of its own sinnership.

If one manifestation of the church’s “going deeper” is a recovery of the saving substance of the gospel, another manifestation will be the church’s reawakening to the human condition, even the church’s reawakening to its own sinnership.  In other words, Christians will always be less quick to identify sin in others than to stand aghast at their own depravity.  Peter doesn’t come to see, with a measure of sober insight, that there is this or that about him that is unworthy of the master; he blurts his awareness that sin is all he has to admit.

Of course it’s the one who is love-Incarnate who steeps Peter in horror at himself. In precisely the same way it will be love, and nothing but love, which exposes on the Day of Judgement what has been hidden in your heart and mine. To assume that judgement means that God is resentful or a grudge-holder is as false as it is shallow. Profounder people know that love searches, love convicts and love horrifies as nothing else can.  When the love of Him who is Love (John 4:8) exposes my apparent altruism as subtle manipulation; when the kindness of God exposes my seeming sensitivity as fear of not being commended; when love’s intensity unmasks my generous smile as the cloak for the vindictive spirit I’d rather not display — what can this produce in me except that horror which cries, “Depart from me”?   If my wife loved me only slightly, then excuses for my ill-treatment of her and others would be readier-to-hand and more believable. As it is, the very love which sustains me, shames me.  Can God’s greater love do any less?

Yet a church which “goes deeper” will also know that its Lord doesn’t leave us here. No sooner does Peter cry out in anguish than Jesus comforts him, “Fear not.”   Everywhere in scripture where God is met and fear consumes, the pronouncement “Fear not” is heard immediately.   “Fear not” is a command of God, to be sure; yet it is command only because it is first and last God’s gift.  In commanding us to “fear not” God is turning us to face him, recognize his love and acknowledge his mercy as he quells in us that fear we should otherwise never be rid of.

John Newton, slavetrader-turned-preacher, hymnwriter and spiritual advisor; for the remainder of his life moments of appalling self-disgust lapped at him concerning the suffering he had unleashed through the slavetrade and which he was now powerless to prevent.  Newton ’s heart was one with Peter’s when Newton wrote,

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear

And grace my fears relieved.

Grace both quickens fear and relieves fear.  The church that beckons winsomely to a secular society is the church that has ceased speaking of sin in terms of trivia and instead both recognizes profoundly the predicament of humankind and also glories gratefully in that love which unmasks us only to remake us.

III: — It’s the “relieved” disciples who come ashore and are told that henceforth they will “catch” others – whereupon they leave everything and follow Jesus. The crowds, meanwhile, have remained on the shore, and remained hungry as well for that Word which they want to hear inasmuch as they can’t generate it for themselves. It’s as Peter and his friends “leave” and “follow” that the crowds will be nourished with the bread of life.

We need to understand something crucial here.  To “leave everything” and follow Jesus meant a change of livelihood for Peter and his colleagues.  But it didn’t mean this for others.  Others could follow as devotedly (and indeed were called to follow as devotedly) while remaining a tentmaker (Paul), a member of the city council (Erastus), a seamstress (Dorcas), a businesswoman (Lydia), a royal attendant (the unnamed Ethiopian).  The many like them followed Jesus every bit as devotedly as the few who ceased their customary employment.

Then in the course of following had they in fact “left everything?” Yes.  To “leave everything” is profoundly to leave behind an entire world (with its distorted outlook, its grasping self-preoccupation, and its narcissistic self-promotion); it is to embrace that new world which our Lord has brought with him in his resurrection from the dead.

Upon coming to faith in Jesus Christ and joining Christ’s people in Corinth Erastus remained the city-treasurer.         Yet Erastus now lived in a new world.  Accordingly, while he was considerably more affluent than most others in the Corinthian congregation, he wouldn’t think himself superior to them; neither would he exploit his social privilege and “lord” it over them or manipulate them.  At the same time, the non-Christians in Corinth would know Erastus could be counted on to bring integrity to the job:  public monies wouldn’t be siphoned off for personal gain or private ventures. That world had been left behind forever.

Lydia , a businesswoman who handled carriage-trade women’s clothing, was the first European convert on Paul’s mission.  Lydia bore witness to the gospel with the result that her household (family and employees) cherished the Word and were baptized.  Thereafter Lydia extended hospitality whenever she could.  Now in first century Europe hotels were largely places of a reputation better left undescribed.  To extend hospitality promptly and graciously, as Lydia did, declared one’s repudiation of what the hotel-trade represented; it proved that you now lived in a world renewed at God’s hand.

Prisca and Aquila were tentmakers (like Paul.) Paul was everlastingly grateful for these two people inasmuch as they had risked their necks for him. (Surely to risk one’s life is to “leave everything”.)   What’s more, this Christian couple were Jewish.  They had saved from untimely death the man who spoke of himself as “the apostle to the gentiles”.  For this reason Paul declared, “All the churches of the gentiles give thanks for [this Jewish couple.”] (Romans 16:4) In addition, they opened up their home so that a house-church could gather there on Sundays. Their courage, as well as their open hand, open heart and open home, plus the boost they gave the gentile mission — all of this points to people who have “left everything” in order to follow.

Jesus insists that followers leave everything, for otherwise “following” will be more of the order of meandering, flipflopping, or lurching. The instability of it all is corrected by one matter, according to the apostle James: singlemindedness. As usual Soren Kierkegaard says it with unique pithiness: purity of heart is to will one thing. To leave all and follow is to resolve that henceforth the one good we pursue is the kingdom of God; the one word that orients us in the midst of confusion is the truth of the gospel; the one lord to whom we cling is Jesus Christ; and the one reward that exhilarates us as nothing else is the sight of others joining us in singleminded discipleship as they too are “caught” through the witness of those who have gone ever so deep themselves.

The day will come, in our secularized society, when in response to those who have “gone deeper” God honours their diligence and patience and suffering. In a word, the day will come when the crowds press forward once again to hear the Word of God.

                                                                                                    Victor Shepherd         

March 2007                                                                                                                            

Luke 6: 46

I: — At one time I was a postgraduate student at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Several of us offshore doctoral students were drinking coffee in a common room. We were comparing notes as to what we had had to do when we entered Great Britain . The students from the USA had had to check in with the police department. I hadn’t had to, I said, inasmuch as I was a British subject.

“British subject“, one of the American students exploded, “How can you admit to being a subject of any sort? Even if you are one you shouldn’t use the word. It’s demeaning.” But I have never felt demeaned through being a British subject. I have never felt oppressed or cramped or belittled in any way. On the contrary I have always felt extraordinarily rich in being a British subject. After all, I belong to the oldest democratic tradition in the world. Because it’s the oldest, it’s the most trustworthy. (To what extent would trust the democratic “tradition” of Germany or Russia ?) What’s more, it was Britain that first insisted that no one could be jailed without being charged and convicted. It was Britain whose treatment of peoples subdued in military conflict was the gentlest. (Can you imagine where     Quebec would be today if New France had succumbed to the Spanish or the Dutch?) I have always thought it a privilege to be a British subject. The American student, on the other hand, thought it demeaning. Opinions were sharply divided.

II: — Opinions are divided in the same way when God’s claim upon our obedience is mentioned.

“Obedience”, someone snorts, “Obedience is demeaning. ‘Obedience’ is another word for slavery and misery. You’ve got to be your own person, subject to no one.”

The Christian disciple, on the other hand, knows that to hear the claim of God, to recognize the claim of God, to obey the claim of God — in short, to be subject to God — is a wonderful privilege that brings blessings. So who is right?

Whether God’s claim upon our obedience enslaves or liberates depends on the root human condition. As though it were yesterday I remember sitting on a park bench in downtown Toronto (it was outside St. James Cathedral) before Maureen and I were married. Maureen was an agnostic in those days (perhaps even an atheist.) She wasn’t gong to be stampeded in Christian “faith”, if she was going to move into it at all. “I don’t want to look at the world and life through spectacles (Christian faith) that only distort and falsify”, she said. As gently as I could (there was a great deal at stake for me here) I explained that her unconscious assumption plainly was that humankind, in its present condition, has perfect eyesight, a true view of life, and therefore spectacles of any sort, but especially religious spectacles, necessarily distort and falsify. Yet according to the gospel, humankind has a heart condition and a head condition that together produce defective eyesight, terribly defective eyesight. In fact it is only as we put on Jesus Christ in faith — i.e., only as we put on the corrective lens that he is — that we see truly, see profoundly, and therefore see adequately.

To put on Christ is always to put on all of him: to put him on as saviour or salvager, also as companion and judge, and certainly as Lord. In other words, to be a disciple is to obey. There is genuine faith only where there is eager obedience. Where there isn’t even aspiration to obedience then faith, so-called, is nothing more than romantic sentiment. For this reason Jesus poses the question starkly, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’, yet you don’t do what I tell you.”

It has all come to our attention too many times over with the television preachers and others like them. Some people are terribly disillusioned by the disclosures; some are disgusted; some are angry. I am sad more than anything else; sad that anyone is so very self-deceived as to think that disciples can disregard their Lord’s claim upon them yet remain disciples.

III: — In all of this no one appears to understand a profound truth that riddles scripture: obedience means freedom. The obedient person — and only the obedient person — is the free person. To grasp this, however, we have to understand how scripture understands freedom.

Most people think that freedom is having several alternatives to choose from. A youngster goes to an ice cream parlour and finds that there are twenty-seven flavours available. Just imagine: twenty-seven, and she need choose only one. “What freedom”, she thinks. We all know what happens next. “I think I’ll have strawberry ripple; I mean Swiss chocolate; no, tiger tails. Do you have any liquorice and peanut butter?” What the child calls “freedom” — one choice among twenty-seven — is really indeterminism. No one is twisting the girl’s arm to pick a flavour. No one is determining which ice cream cone she is going to buy. Her situation isn’t characterized by freedom but rather by indeterminism: no power external to her is coercing her.

When the bible speaks of freedom, however, it means something entirely different; it means the absence of any impediment to acting in accord with our true nature. Our true nature is to be a child of God by faith, and to reflect the family-resemblance found in Jesus our elder brother. The free person is simply the person for whom there is no impediment (outer or inner), no obstacle to her living as that child of God which she is by faith.

As a disciple of Jesus Christ I am not “free” in the sense that I can choose among many alternatives; I’m not “free” because I can choose to be honest, or semi-honest, or completely dishonest. I’m not “free” in the sense that I can choose to be joyfully faithful to my wife, grudgingly faithful to her, or out-and-out promiscuous. I’m not “free” in the sense that I can choose to be kind or indifferent or outright cruel. To be sure, I can choose among all the alternatives I’ve just listed. But choosing from a list of alternatives has nothing to do with freedom. Freedom means that I have been liberated from any impediment to living as a disciple of Jesus Christ’ I have been freed from obstacles that would otherwise derail my discipleship. I may and do live as what I am: a child of God, recognizable from my likeness (however slight) to my elder brother.

Think for a minute of a railway train. Imagine that obstacles litter the track (say, a dump truck with granite slabs spilling out of it.) Since the obstacles are an impediment, the train isn’t free to run along the track. Once the obstacles are removed, however, the train is free. “But is the train free to fly like an airplane?” someone wants to say. The question, be it noted, entails a misuse of the word “free.” After all, trains were never meant to fly like airplanes; it isn’t a train’s nature to fly. It’s a train’s nature to run along tracks. Therefore a train has been freed when it is free to operate in accord with its own nature. All of which is to say that you and I are free when we cling to our Lord in faith and obey him in matters great and small and know ourselves children of our Father who reflect the family-resemblance of our elder brother. For then we are living in accord with our true nature. Obedience can only mean freedom.

IV: — All of which brings me to the last point. Our blessedness is found in obedience. So far from being a straitjacket that ties us up in frustration and self-contradiction and futility — curse, in short — obedience spells blessings. I am reminded of this every time I read my favourite psalm, Psalm 119. It’s the longest chapter in all of scripture; and in every line it exalts the blessedness that accompanies obedience. The expression in Ps. 119 that I like best is the psalmist’s cry that Torah, God’s claim upon our obedience, is sweeter than honey.

When Jewish youngsters first learn the Hebrew alphabet, they are helped to do so by playing with wooden blocks into one side of which there has been carved a Hebrew letter. The letter-surface is coated with honey, and as the children learn the letters they get to lick the honey. For the rest of their life they will know that the Hebrew language is sweet; and not only the language, but also Torah, God’s truth and God’s way that are described by the Hebrew language, the way that God has appointed Israel to walk. God’s way — i.e., obedience — is sweeter than honey.

In the Hebrew bible yoke is the commonest metaphor for obedience. Doesn’t Jesus say, “Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light”? His yoke fits well just because it and we have been made for each other. Since Christ’s yoke doesn’t gall or chafe, it is truly said to be “easy.” And since his burden is so very light as to be no burden at all, his “burden” is actually blessing.

Yet how few people understand this. When most people think of the concrete, everyday obedience that God requires of us they think of the Ten Commandments. The mere sound of the word “commandment” puts them off, because the sound of the word suggests a parade-square sergeant barking at them. But is the atmosphere surrounding our obedience to our Father that of a barking parade-square sergeant? Or is it that of the delighted child who learns that Torah, life’s alphabet, God’s way, really is sweeter than honey?

Concerning the Ten Commandments Martin Luther wrote, “Whoever keeps the first (the commandment to have no other gods) keeps them all; whoever breaks the tenth (the commandment forbidding coveting) breaks them all. In not coveting at all — nothing of the neighbour’s possessions, money, spouse, children, reputation or good fortune — we are blessed. Does anyone doubt it? If we covet our neighbour’s goods, we thieve; if his reputation, we slander; if her spouse, we commit adultery; if her popularity or power, we murder. Then Luther was right: to break the commandment that forbids coveting is to break them all.

Needless to say, if obedience spells blessings then disobedience spells curse. Is this really the case? Let’s look again at coveting. Insofar as we covenant what someone else has we shall first be profoundly and pervasively discontented ourselves; next we shall resent her for having what we don’t have; next we shall exaggerate character defects in her character or even invent them; finally we shall want nothing to do with her for any number of supposedly good reasons, all of which are actually the crudest, albeit unconscious, rationalizations thrown up by our envious heart. Insofar as we covet we shall be consumed with envy of her, resentment at her, contempt for her and hostility toward her. At the end of it all we shall be left friendless, isolated, stuck with our own embittered spirit. Is there any freedom here? There is misery and frustration and nastiness. But is there any freedom, any blessing? Manifestly not; there is only curse. On the other hand, to obey the command of God from our heart is to know blessing. Then the apostle John is correct when he says, “God’s commandments are not burdensome.” (1^st John 5:3)

“It’s all too slick”, someone objects. “Christ’s yoke isn’t always easy, and his burden isn’t always light. For Christ himself insisted that the Way is a hard way, and the gate through which we enter upon this Way is a narrow gate.” We cannot pretend anything else. Jesus certainly insisted that the gate is narrow and the way hard. In other words, sometimes obeying God is demanding and abrasive. To be sure, there are times and places and situations where obedience is difficult.

After World War II Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch woman who was one of the few survivor of Ravensbrueck, was shopping at a department store one day when she knew, just knew, that the man three or four persons ahead of her in the line-up at the cash register was a guard who had abused her in that terrible camp where her sister Betsie had perished.   Suddenly she was on the point of becoming unglued. Still, as a disciple of Jesus Christ she knew what she was supposed to do. Certainty about what she had to do and rage concerning this man warred within her until the certainty bested the rage. She staggered up to the man and identified herself to him. She told him that in the name of Jesus Christ she forgave him.

Whenever she related this story subsequently someone in the audience invariably remarked how wonderful it was that the whole thing was over and done with at that moment, that she walked away from it right there, knew it was all behind her and never thought of it again. “Are you kidding?” Corrie always said, “Every morning when I get up I see that man’s hideous face again, and I go to the floor all over until I can stumble back to forgiving him once more.”

Parishioners often visit their pastor inasmuch as they are temptation-prone in one area of life especially. It can be any area at all. It’s not that life in general is hard for them (or at least no harder for them than it is for everyone else.) It’s not even that walking the Christian way in general is insuperably hard for them. Nevertheless, in the one area of their besetting temptation the Way is exceedingly hard. We shouldn’t pretend anything else. Jesus never suggested anything else.

Yet I am convinced that to “tough out” the hard spots is still to know blessing and freedom. When I was on a rigorous canoe trip a year or two ago I came upon breathtaking scenery, the glorious scenery that Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven have painted so very wonderfully. The scenery changed from quiet rivers to small lakes to Georgian Bay with its shoreside abandoned lumber town and the rich history one could imagine in such a place. But of course in order to lose oneself in this scenery and its beauty one had to get through the portages. Portaging, everyone knows, is never the fun that paddling is. Portaging in scorching summer heat while being buzzed by black flies you don’t have a hand free to swat — this is hard. Yet it is only as we sweat through the portages persistently, as cheerfully as we can, that we know and cherish the certain delight on the other side of them.

And therefore at the end of the day I remain convinced that obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ is the way to genuine freedom and profoundest blessings.

If we call Jesus “Lord” then we should obey him, especially since obeying him will alone prove that his yoke is easy, and prove as well that in shouldering this yoke we are living precisely as our Father intends his children to live lest they forfeit his reward.

Victor Shepherd

January 2003

Luke 7:36-50

I: — “O that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth, for your love is better than wine.” “Your kisses [are] like the best wine that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth.” (Song of Solomon 1:2; 7:9) The bible is always earthy in its discussion of sex. The world, on the other hand, tends to be vulgar, and ever more vulgar, in its discussion. Rightly offended at the world’s vulgarity, the church reacts but too often reacts unhelpfully: offended because the world renders sex vulgar, the church then renders it ethereal, abstract, unearthly and unearthy.

Let’s approach the matter from a different angle. Have you ever pondered the difference between the erotic and the pornographic? The world often wallows in the pornographic, depicting sex as passion only without reference to persons. The church, on the other hand, often flees into a false spirituality by speaking of sex as a spiritual event without reference to passion.

The Hebrew mind is wiser than all of this. The Hebrew mind (and heart) knows that while the pornographic is humanly debasing, the erotic is humanly fulfilling. While the pornographic is perverse, the erotic is God-given. While the pornographic exploits, the erotic enhances. The Hebrew mind always remembers that it is God who has made us sexually differentiated. Therefore to denounce the erotic is to disdain the wisdom and goodness of God; it is to call “bad” what he has called “blessing.” This, of course, is sin. The writer of the book of Proverbs was acquainted with the mind and will and purpose of God when he wrote that “the way of a man with a maid” is so marvellous as to transcend human comprehension. To be sure, he knew that the pornographic is eroticism debased, eroticism perverted, eroticism exploited, something good bent to an evil purpose, a blessing rendered a curse. Still, the fact of distortion and perversion never obliterates the goodness of God’s intention and purpose. Where sexual matters are concerned, the Hebrew soul is neither vulgar nor ethereal but instead earthy, God-glorifyingly earthy. “Your kisses are like the best wine that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth.”

At the same time, because of its honesty and transparency scripture admits that this kiss can be perverted. The kiss of the seductress in Prov. 7:13 is such a perversion. This woman, “dressed as a harlot, wily of heart” (7:10) kisses a fellow saying, “Let us take our fill of love till morning; let us delight ourselves with love. For my husband is not at home; he has gone on a long journey.” (7:18-19) At the end of the day, however, the distortion of what is good cannot deny what is good. “O that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth.”

II: — Another feature of the Hebrew mind: it never pretends that the romantic kiss, the erotic kiss, is the only kind of kiss, or even the most important kind of kiss. Far more frequently scripture speaks of the kiss of parent and child, brother and sister, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, even friend and friend.

Then we must examine other kisses, even hanker after other kinds of kisses, like the kiss with which Esau forgave his brother Jacob. Jacob was a scoundrel. His name, in Hebrew, means “deceiver”, and he was as bad as his name. He deceived his father Isaac and defrauded his brother Esau. Jacob didn’t pilfer nickels and dimes from Esau; Jacob plundered him and demeaned him. Jacob stole everything from Esau that there was to steal.

Jacob and Esau went their separate ways only to meet up years later. When Jacob was about to meet his brother he gathered up gifts without number hoping thereby to placate Esau and defuse Esau’s retaliation. In other words, having displayed the cruellest cunning Jacob now displayed the crassest manipulation. At the moment of their meeting, however, Esau didn’t slay Jacob. Esau didn’t even demand compensation from Jacob. Instead, we are told, “Esau ran to meet Jacob, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him, and they wept.” Jacob, overwhelmed at Esau’s forgiveness, cried, “Truly, to see your face is like seeing the face of God, with such favour have you received me.” (Genesis 33:10)

Esau kisses Jacob in forgiveness; Jacob’s heart melts at the unexpected magnanimity; he cries, “To see your face is like seeing the face of God, with such favour have you received me.”

The bible as a whole insists that no one can see the face of God and survive. Moses is permitted to look upon God’s “backside”, as it were, but not even Moses can see God’s face – if he wants to survive. The closest any of us can come to seeing God’s face is to see what is like God’s face. And what is like God’s face, the old story tells us, is the face of Esau as he pardons his brother, and more than merely pardons him; as he pours out such affection on Jacob as Jacob has never known, as he’s so glad to see his brother that he’s not even thinking of all he’s lost, as he’s so thrilled with the reconciliation – never mind who did what to whom – that he’s oblivious to everything except the grand fact of having his brother back! Heedless of everything except his brother, Esau kisses Jacob – with the result that while Jacob, of course, has never seen the face of God, seeing Esau is like seeing the face of God.

Esau’s kind of kissing is a most important kind. It’s a kind of kissing we should come to be good at ourselves. After all, the people whom we meet in the spirit of Esau – the spirit of forgiveness – are people who will find that seeing our face is like seeing the face of God.

III: — While we are talking about the kissing we must do we should also talk about the kissing we mustn’t do. Judas betrayed his Lord with a kiss. (Mark 14:43-45) This is treachery. For years I thought there could be nothing worse than abandonment. Everyone is aware of the damage (frequently irreparable damage) visited upon children whose parents abandon them. Everyone has seen people abandoned by friends (or by those thought to be friends.) Everyone has seen someone courageously take a stand only to have that person’s colleagues, having promised support, slink away in self-interest. For years, therefore, I thought there could be nothing worse than abandonment. I was wrong. There is something worse than abandonment: betrayal. What could be worse than treachery at the hands of those we have trusted?

Judas wasn’t the first person in Israel’s history to betray someone with a kiss. Towards the end of David’s life David himself was in a sorry state; so were the people; so was the army. Amasa was the army’s leader. Joab wanted the position. Upon meeting Amasa, one day, Joab grasped Amasa’s beard and drew Amasa to himself so as to kiss him. Amasa never saw the knife in Joab’s other hand. At the moment that Joab kissed Amasa, he disembowelled him. (2 Samuel 20:9) Judas kissed Jesus and thereby identified him for our Lord’s killers. Like Joab, like Judas.

Like Joab, like John Smith. Like Joab, like Jane Doe. It happens all the time, doesn’t it. Treachery! As terrible as abandonment is, there’s something worse: betrayal.

Then there’s a kiss we must ever abhor: the phoney kiss, the hollow kiss, the hypocritical kiss, the kiss of betrayal. How terrible is this kiss? Jesus said of Judas, “It would have been better for that man if he had never been born.”

IV: — And then there’s the kiss that moves me as often as I read of it. There was once a woman who learned that Jesus was lunching in the neighbourhood. (Luke 7:36-52) She hadn’t been invited to lunch. The host giving the lunch was Simon the Pharisee, and Pharisees didn’t invite to lunch those whose reputation was as discoloured as this woman’s. Besides, Jesus and Simon were both men, and in first century Palestine men didn’t talk to women in public.

Plainly the woman was overwhelmed with gratitude to Jesus and love for him as well. Initially it was gratitude: he had done for her what no one else had or could. Then it was love born of gratitude, even as the gratitude remained. Now love, gratitude, affection, magnified hugely, together coursed through her as she forgot herself before the master.

Forgot herself? She never forgot herself. She knew exactly what she was doing at every minute. She wasn’t invited to lunch but intruded herself anyway. She knew that men didn’t talk to unknown women but threw herself upon Jesus in any case. She knew that letting down her hair in public was a disgrace for a woman (akin to denuding herself in public), but she didn’t know what else to do to tell him she now had nothing to hide from him. Then she kissed his feet.

What a glorious reversal of the foot-kissing that had always been the oriental equivalent of bootlicking! In the eastern world of old, conquered kings, representing their conquered peoples, had to kiss the feet of their conqueror. It was an enforced public humiliation; it betokened abject submission to that conqueror whom you hated but before whom you now had to grovel. To be defeated was bad enough; to have to acknowledge it publicly, worse; to have to acknowledge it by grovelling – bootlicking, foot-kissing – worst of all. (Isaiah 49:23)

How different it was with the woman who stole into the house of Simon the Pharisee. She wasn’t defeated; she was freed. She wasn’t forced into public humiliation; she was grateful. She wasn’t grovelling before someone she loathed; she was rendering a service to someone she loved.

The woman kissed our Lord’s feet. Plainly his feet didn’t repel her. Plainly she thought his feet beautiful. “How beautiful are the feet” (I’m quoting now from Isaiah 52); “how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace (shalom, salvation), who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’”

“How beautiful are the feet of him who brings good tidings.” The prophet who penned these words had in mind Israel’s tortuous exile, Israel suffering miserably at the hands of the Babylonians. Thanks to the Word of the Lord vouchsafed to him the prophet announced unequivocally that Israel’s exile was ending: “We’re going home!” And the people had exulted with one voice, “We’re going home!”

When the woman kissed the beautiful feet of Jesus she had already come to know that he was more than the messenger of God; he was the message incarnate. She had already come to know that he wasn’t telling her she was going home or even how to get home; in his company she was at home, and knew it.

One day when I was visiting my older sister and her husband in Ottawa I asked my brother-in-law, just before the church-service began, what his favourite hymn was. Now John’s upbringing had included an indifferent attitude toward the church. Since meeting and marrying my sister he has become a believer, has attended church without missing a Sunday, even become congregational treasurer. Because his church background was as indifferent as mine was intense, I expected him to tell me that his favourite hymn was “Onward, Christian Soldiers” or some such “golden oldie” that any middle-aged Canadian would know of. In the course of replying to my question John stared ahead of him for the longest time and then said ever so softly, “My favourite hymn is ‘Jesus see me at thy feet; nothing but thy blood can save me.’” Unquestionably my brother-in-law understands the woman who unpinned her hair and kissed the feet of Jesus.

When Simon the Pharisee objected strenuously to the poor taste of this uninvited woman Jesus said, “Simon, you never kissed me; you don’t love much, do you.”

V: — And then of course there’s the “holy kiss” or the “kiss of love” (both expressions are used: Romans 16:16; 1 Peter 5:14) with which Christians are to greet each other. Over and over the epistles of the newer testament conclude with the reminder that Christians are to greet each other with a holy kiss or a kiss of love. We need not press it literally, any more than we are going to say that everyone should literally kiss the feet of Jesus. Still, the kiss with which Christians greet each other is important. In Israel friends kissed friends (David and Jonathan) as a sign of solidarity and affection, usually kissing each other on the forehead or the cheek or the shoulder. Today we shake hands or embrace.

In the Middle Ages men carried their weapon in their right hand. To shake hands with your right hand meant that you hadn’t concealed even the smallest weapon and therefore weren’t about to stab the person before you. In the ancient world, prior to the Middle Ages, soldiers carried their shield in their left hand. To shake hands with your left hand (like a Boy Scout) meant that you had discarded your shield and therefore weren’t preoccupied with defending yourself.

What about shaking hands with both hands? Do we ever do it? Surely when we embrace we are shaking hands with both hands! Then to embrace means both hands are empty. We aren’t concerned to attack or defend; we are simply going to be.

In the early church the holy kiss was exchanged immediately before Holy Communion. The Lord’s Supper is an anticipation of the messianic banquet where savagery and treachery and betrayal, retaliation and vindictiveness and every kind of lethal one-upmanship will have no place and will not be found. Then they have no place here, and shouldn’t be found here.

I don’t care whether you kiss me, hug me, shake my hand, wink at me, or punch me on the shoulder, as long as I know that it’s a holy punch or a holy wink and therefore I need neither attack nor defend; I need only be.

VI: — Lastly, all of us not only long to kiss; we also long to be kissed. Especially on Valentine’s Day we long to be kissed. Let’s think for a minute what it is to be kissed by God. The rabbis who came to the fore at the close of the Hebrew bible used to say there are 103 ways of dying. Some deaths are relatively easy: we slip away peacefully in our sleep. Other deaths are more difficult. Some deaths are distressing. And some deaths, as every pastor and physician knows, are simply hideous. The easiest kind of death, slipping away in one’s sleep, the rabbis spoke of as being “kissed by God.

The book of Hebrews maintains that Jesus Christ has “tasted” death for us. He has drunk death down, all of it, even at its most hideous; he has drunk it down so thoroughly as to drink it all up. Most profoundly, he has drunk up all the dregs of death so as to leave nothing in the cup for us to drink. Therefore the only death that remains for Christ’s people is that death which in fact is to be kissed by God, regardless of the circumstances of our dying. To be sure, from a physical or psychological standpoint some deaths are easier than others. From a spiritual standpoint, however, all of Christ’s people have been appointed to a death that is simply to be kissed by God.

Valentine was a martyr in the early church. We don’t know exactly when he was born or when he died. We do know, however, that by the year 350 a church had been named after him in Rome. We know too that ever since the Middle Ages February 14 has been Valentine’s feast day.

Since Valentine died the death of a martyr his death couldn’t have been easy. In another respect, however, since he was one of Christ’s own, he died with the kiss of God upon him.

The rabbis of old maintained that Moses was the first to die by means of God’s kiss. Moses may have been the first, but he certainly wasn’t the last, for all Christ’s people have been appointed to such a transition.

So – how good are we at kissing? At how many kinds of kissing? Valentine’s Day has always had much to do with kissing and with being kissed. Then may you and I alike have the happiest Valentine’s Day now, even as we anticipate the day when our kissing is over just because we ourselves have been kissed with the kiss of God.

“Jesus, see me at thy feet; nothing but thy blood has saved me.” And you? You?

Victor Shepherd    

February 2002

Luke 7:36-52

As a youngster I hated washing or drying the dishes. Because the family kept eating, there was no lasting relief from dish-duty. The task was never done, and the task was onerous. More to the point, I hated dish-duty because of the mood around the kitchen sink: whenever my sisters and I did the dishes, we fought. As often as we fought, I lost, my sisters being then (as now) formidable man-eaters.

Several years later it all turned around for me. I couldn’t wait to do the dishes. You see, I had fallen in love. That first week Maureen and I spent at her parents’ cottage (don’t worry, her mother was there the whole time!); regardless of who prepared the means, Maureen and I did the dishes. It was one more time to be alone together. Mind you, it took a lot longer to do the dishes now, since dish-duty was frequently interrupted by kisses as protracted as they were intense. (We kissed so ardently that our teeth were out of alignment for hours afterwards!) As for fighting over the dishes — never! Now the kitchen sink was the venue of passion. The power of a new affection is amazing, isn’t it!

Last century a profound Scottish preacher, Thomas Chalmers, used to speak of the Christian life as a life motivated and directed by what he called “the expulsive power of a new affection”. Chalmers had noticed one thing above all else in his years of ministry: berating people to do this or that (or stop doing this or that), cajoling people, browbeating them, embarrassing them — it was wholly sub-Christian and hopelessly unproductive. Chalmers had noticed that when people knew themselves cherished by Jesus Christ and flooded with his love, their hearts exploded in love for him. As love for their Lord became the characteristic of their lives, lesser loves, lesser affections, lesser attachments — whatever it was that characterized them previously — these were expelled coincidentally and forgotten forever as they dried up and withered away.

We 20th century people don’t use vocabulary like “the expulsive power of a new affection”. Yet we know that while vocabularies change, the human situation does not. For this reason I have not been surprised at the conclusions of Gerald May, M.D. Gerald May is an American psychiatrist (much-mentioned from this pulpit) who began his medical career with the United States Air Force in Viet Nam. When he returned to the U.S.A. he worked in Washington among men and women who were substance-abusers. By his own admission his work was an abysmal failure. He discovered that his psychiatric sophistication was ineffective, unable to do anything for people who were “hooked”. On the other hand he was startled to see that para-church organizations (like the Twelve-Step Recovery Programs) were far more effective despite their psychiatric crudeness. He came to see first-hand the expulsive power of a new affection.

Dr. May has become a major figure in the field of spiritual direction. Spiritual direction is not psychotherapy. Spiritual direction assists earnest Christians in discerning God’s way with them and God’s will for them and God’s work within them, at the same time as it identifies and removes impediments to their moving deeper into the fathomless depths of God’s life and love.

Gerald May is convinced that while not very of us are substance-abusers, all of us are addicts. He says we are addicted inasmuch as we are persistently deflected from our true love, our proper love, our love for God. Anything to which we cling or which clings to us, short-circuiting that love with which we are meant to love God, deflecting that love into lesser objects and attachments unworthy of it; to that thing we are addicted, says May. Only grace can break these scarcely-noticed yet spiritually-inhibitive addictions, says May, but grace certainly can.

Many things addict people. Food addicts some, we know, but food-avoidance addicts others. (An obsession with remaining slender is an addiction. An obsession with a beauty-contest body is an addiction.) Social climbing addicts some, acquiring a superior reputation addicts others, having our children mirror us as we wish we could have been addicts others. We are addicted to anything that deflects us from our true love, our real home, our profoundest happiness, God. We are addicted to anything that impedes our moving deeper into him whose depths would render us able to do no more than stammer about him.

We should be blind — and ridiculous — if we pretended that money isn’t a raging addiction. Money, together with the pursuits that money gathers around itself, is a raging addiction. The Hebrew mind has always known this. That’s why Jesus says more about money than about any other single thing. Jesus insists that money is a spiritual threat before which other spiritual threats pale. According to our Lord there is no spiritual threat like money. In the Matthew’s gospel and Mark’s, one verse out of ten discusses money; in Luke’s gospel, one verse out of eight; in James’s tiny epistle, one verse out of five. Since you and I regularly read right past these verses we should listen to Mark Twain. Mark Twain said he was unlike most people in that whereas they were bothered by the bible-passages they couldn’t understand, he was bothered by the passages he could understand — so bothered that he preferred not to read them! No single item is as discussed as often in scripture as money is simply because no single item is as spiritually threatening.

Not even sex. Only a fool would deny that sex can be a spiritual threat. But when is the last time we became upset over our children’s access to glossy pictures of a naked Ferrari provocatively posed, or of a dream-home calculated to render someone’s fantasies uncontrollable? We deplore addiction to pornography, pity the person “hooked” by it, and tell him he should leave no stone unturned in getting help before his inner life is messed-up, his outer life a disgrace, and he himself compromised, bent, broken. When faced with addiction to credit cards we — what do we do? Last week a Christian counselor known to me advised a young married man plainly addicted to credit cards to declare personal bankruptcy. That way he won’t have to pay his creditors and in only six months the bank will issue him another credit card!

A man and his ten year old son were out walking on Queen Street when the son walked past a penny on the sidewalk. Immediately the father backed him up (the father himself told me) in order to teach his son the value of money. “Do you know when you can afford to walk past a penny on the sidewalk?”, he lectured officiously, “when you can give a bank clerk 99 cents and the clerk will give you one dollar. Only then.” My heart sank. Is that the attitude to money that a church family learned here, under my leadership? Only grace can break an addiction. Only grace could have found that parent saying to his son, “Do you know when you can afford to walk past a penny on the sidewalk? When there is no one, anywhere, who is hungry; no one who is homeless; no one who is without the light and truth and life of that gospel by which he or she becomes and remains a child of God. That’s when you can afford to walk past a penny!”

Some people will want to say they can’t afford to walk past a penny for another reason. The mortgage is large. I am the last person to pretend that mortgages aren’t onerous. Still, two considerations always have to be kept in mind. One, the size of the mortgage is controlled by the size of the house. How much house do we need? (More about this in a moment.) Two, family incomes in this congregation are generally much higher than in Mississauga at large. Approximately 4% of Mississauga’s families have a total family income (where “total family income” includes any number of wage-earners) under $8500 per year; 9% of Mississauga’s families have a total family income under $16000 per year; 17% under $24000 per year; 27% under $35000. I am not denying for a minute that we certainly have in our congregation families (a family may be a single person) whose income bracket I have just mentioned. Nevertheless, on the whole our congregation is vastly more affluent than this.

And now a word about the size of houses. For the longest time I was puzzled as to why Mississaugans purchase houses of thousands of square feet when the house is occupied by only four or three or even two people, two people both of whom are out of the house all day. Why do people buy much more house than they need? One day an accountant gave me the answer: a big house is the best tax-shelter one can have. Immediately I saw how stupid I have been. I live in a one thousand square foot house that backs onto the world’s largest dog-food factory. As a tax-shelter it’s dismal. Still, when I am tempted to berate myself I allow myself to feel better by remembering that I had always thought a house to be a weather-shelter.

I shall continue to think of a house as weather-shelter. For if I think of it as anything else I know that my heart will shrivel. And there is no shelter against a shrivelled heart, even as there is no shelter before God against our unbelief, our debility and death, our appointment with the judge on the day he has set.

It was different with the Christians in Macedonia. They had heard of the plight of the Christians in Jerusalem. Paul tells us that the Macedonian Christians were poor, dreadfully poor. Yet when they heard of the distress in Jerusalem they didn’t say, “Don’t ask us to help. We are strapped ourselves.” Instead they begged Paul to allow them to contribute. Note: the apostle did not browbeat or cajole them into contributing, expecting no more than the loose change in pocket or purse. They begged him to let them give. With moving simplicity Paul says of the Macedonian Christians, “They gave beyond their means.”

Why did they? Why did they want to give beyond their means? Because they knew that anything they might do to be but the palest reflection of what Jesus Christ had already done for them. What could they ever give, regardless of sacrifice involved, compared to what he had given them? This is the nub of Christian stewardship, isn’t it! People who are overwhelmed at the salvation Jesus Christ has wrought for them and worked in them and witnesses to them; people for whom this is heart-penetrating and horizon-filling — the motivation of such people has nothing to do with tax-shelters and capital gains provisions. If someone had said to the Christians in Macedonia, “What commendable generosity you have displayed!”, the Macedonians would have replied, “Commendable? There is nothing virtuous in unselfconscious gratitude to him who brought us life in the Spirit; furthermore, there is nothing virtuous in getting rid of the most lethal threat to our life in the Spirit. Why do you regard as virtuous what we regard as common sense?”

We have to think again of Thomas Chalmers’s, “The expulsive power of a new affection.” We have to search our hearts and ask ourselves, “What new affection: do we have enough love for our Lord to expel anything?” We have to come to terms with what in fact we love above all else (everyone else already knows what we love above all else, regardless of what we say). We need to hear and heed our psychiatrist-friend, Dr. Gerald May: we are addicted to anything that persistently, relentlessly deflects us from our true love, God. And then we have to listen to Gerald May once more: addiction will not yield to psychotherapy or psychopharmacology — addiction yields only to grace.

All of which brings us to a crucial point in today’s sermon. When preachers crank up their annual stewardship sermon, preachers always identify need in terms of the church’s need: the number one need to be laid before the congregation is the church’s need to receive money. But all such preachers are wrong! The primary need is never the church’s need to receive; the primary need is our need to give. If a wealthy benefactor willed this congregation a million dollars you and I should still need to give money. Why? In order to demonstrate that the power of money is a broken power in my life. When Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and mammon”, he plainly means that ultimately we serve either God or mammon. Then which do we serve? How do we know we serve the God we say we serve? How does anyone else know that we have forsworn the service of mammon? Only by demonstrating that the power of money (money is powerful that its power rivals the power of God, says Jesus) is a broken power in our lives.

Money is a power. Money bribes, money talks, money silences, money compromises, money crushes, money votes. Even where money is used for purposes that are entirely legitimate, money still has immense power to preoccupy our minds and pervert our hearts. We give money away as a gesture of defiance; we give money away as a means of thumbing our nose at a tyrant whose tyranny appears noble but is in fact shabby. The first need of the church concerning money is the need of the Christ’s people to give it.

Think of the woman in Luke’s gospel who poured the costly perfume over the feet of Jesus. Did she do it because Jesus needed to have to his feet deodorized? Even if our Lord’s feet smelled like baby powder she needed to give away a year’s wages. Luke tells us that the woman had received from Jesus a great forgiveness and a great deliverance; now her heart swelled with a great love. When onlookers complain about the “waste” of it all Jesus says, “You people of shrivelled hearts; you haven’t known a great forgiveness and a great deliverance. Little wonder that you are possessed of no love.”

When I said a minute ago that the primary need pertaining to money is our need to give it, I did not mean that our need to give it is the only need. Unquestionably the church also needs to receive it.

Much money is required to maintain our worship facility. Is the worship facility worth the money required to maintain it? Worship is the most important thing we do here! The public praise of God is an end in itself. Just because the praise of God is an end in itself needing no justification it is also the heart-beat and life-blood of our congregation. Therefore we who identify ourselves with this congregation shall never withhold whatever funds are needed to facilitate our worship.

What about those who are not identified with this congregation? Should we maintain a worship-facility for them? On Tuesday past we conducted the funeral service for Jim Beatty in the sanctuary. I went out to the sidewalk to accompany the casket to the hearse, then came back into the building, only to be “buttonholed” by several people who wished to talk with me. Fifteen minutes later I was back in the sanctuary. A man was waiting in front of the pulpit to speak with me. He had waited fifteen minutes, not knowing if I were ever coming back. “My name is Ron Asselstine.” I replied, “I recognized you, Mr. Asselstine. You are an NHL linesman.” He told me over and over, so moved was he, what my address at Jim Beatty’s funeral had meant to him and his fellow-officials who were at the service. I recognized them at the back of the church on the south side. Wally Harris, a retired referee, now Superintendent of Officials; Terry Gregson and Dave Newell, referees; Andy van Hellemond, the NHL’s seniormost referee. Whenever I saw NHL referees at the game or on TV they always looked like deities to me: authoritative, commanding, imperious, impervious to the players’ obscenities and the fans’ rage. When I saw them at Tuesday’s funeral, sitting at the back of the church on the south side, they struck me not as deities at all: they were simply finite, frail, fragile men, enormously sobered at the untimely death of their legal protector, aware of their own vulnerability and inevitable death. Asselstine and I talked with each other for a long time. When we had finished he knew that I knew how hockey is played.

I have written Ron Asselstine, with a copy of my book, Seasons of Grace, telling him that if NHL game-officials desire spiritual help at any time they are most welcome to contact me.

Are we willing to underwrite worship-facility (and ministerial services) to those who don’t contribute to the maintenance of either?

And there is the matter of support for kingdom-work entirely beyond the parameters of the congregation. I speak now of outreach. Our outreach budget has taken something of a beating in the last few years. I shouldn’t want to see the outreach budget reduced any more. I am afraid that if it is a congregational sickness will set in, a sickness that is very serious. Self-preoccupation is always a serious matter! The individual who becomes ever more self-preoccupied lives in a smaller and smaller world until he can think only about himself, unresponsive to anything outside himself. At this point he is said to have a personality disorder called narcissism. One of the horrifying aspects of personality disorders like narcissism is that they are incurable! Narcissism, the state of being wholly engrossed with oneself, is bad enough; worse still is a narcissism whose self-preoccupation takes the form of being wholly engrossed with one’s imaginary ailments. Now the narcissistic personality disorder takes the form of hypochondria. The hypochondriac, wholly taken up with her health, will imagine herself physically unwell until she finally is, only then to say, “See, I told you!” Outreach should never be shrunk. In the first place, needs elsewhere in the world are greater than ours. In the second place, I don’t want us to become incurable narcissistic hypochondriacs.

No doubt you are all wondering what I am going to say this morning about the costly building repairs we have undertaken. When I first heard of the sum required I winced. When I learned that the alternative to repairing the building was to have it condemned in only a few years I felt that there were only two issues here: do we repair the building, or do we walk away from it? We could walk away from it. We could rent a school auditorium. We should soon find that the rent for the auditorium was next-to-nothing compared to what we pay to maintain the plant-facility here.

I have spoken with several former United Church ministers who left the denomination in 1988 or 1990, and who took many people with them. At first they were chortling over how inexpensive it is to rent a school auditorium. Within a year they were telling me their congregation simply had to have its own building, and for this reason they had established a building fund.

And the expanded parking lot? Investigations in the United States have discovered that inadequate parking is the single largest disincentive to church-attendance.

Having said this much I must say one thing more. We must never allow our current expenditures to become the be-all and end-all of congregational life. Do you remember those anguished days in 1988 and 1990 when our congregation was upset at developments in the denomination? I said at the time that we could and should deal with the developments tangentially; we should deal with them marginally in the course of our kingdom-work. But the one thing we must never do is allow denominational developments to preoccupy us and deflect us from our kingdom-work.

Unquestionably we have a major financial concern in the wake of our building restoration, the parking lot, and similar matters. We shall deal with it. Yet we must always deal with tangentially, never allowing it to preoccupy us and deflect us from our kingdom-work.

When I was very young, nine or ten years old, a very intoxicated man stopped my father one Sunday evening as we were going into church. The man wanted money. My father carried very little with him. My mother managed the household finances. She paid the bills and gave my dad $5 per week. Out of his $5 he purchased ten streetcar tickets to get work, as well as the large issue of the Sunday New York Times newspaper (especially its book reviews) he feasted on for the rest of the week. When the man approached my dad, my dad reached into his pocket and gave the man the $5. “But he will only spend it on booze!”, my sister said. “Quite likely he will”, my father replied, yet gave the man the $5 anyway.

My father’s father had been in and out of jail many times, drunk and disorderly, in the United States and Canada, year after year, until he came to faith and sobriety through the ministry of the church. My father reminded me and my sister on the spot that someone, many people, in fact, had kept his father alive when his father was unemployable, sick, a nuisance, even a disgrace; had given his father money, most of it be misspent, for years until the day when the gospel quickened faith through the faithfulness of the church and deliverance was enjoyed. And so out came my dad’s only $5 bill on a Sunday night.

I don’t know how my father got to work that week. I don’t know what he read in place of the New York Times. I do know that when he died in 1967 and his secretary cleaned out his desk it was discovered that he had been putting aside one dollar per week to buy my mother a dishwasher.

Had he lived to see the dishwasher the kitchen sink would still have been the venue of passion, albeit passion of many different sorts.

You see, my father had long known the expulsive power of a new affection.

                                                                    Victor A. Shepherd                              

November 1994

Luke 8:1-3                 John 20:1-18

For years my heart has kept time with Mary Magdalene’s.  She and I “resonate,” as we say today; she and I are “on the same page.” Now when you hear this don’t go looking for psychosexual subtleties in me; don’t ask yourself, “Why is Victor so ‘taken’ with a woman who was a harlot?” The truth is, she wasn’t a harlot. For centuries the myth in the church at large has been that she was.  Charles Wesley, the finest hymn writer in English and a man of uncommon biblical sophistication, nevertheless penned a hymn (unfortunately) with the line, “Ye Magdalens of lust,” as if Mary’s problem had been nymphomania.  Charles Wesley was wrong. There is nothing in scripture to support this or anything like it.  Therefore you can put aside all your speculations about me.  I resonate with Mary for different reasons, many reasons.  Before I tell you why, however, I want to acquaint you with Mary herself.

She came from Magdala. Magdala was a prosperous city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, halfway between Capernaum and Tiberias. The city flourished, thanks to the fishing, fish-curing, and shipbuilding industries, not to mention trading.  The city was populated almost exclusively by Gentiles; almost, but not quite, for Mary was Jewish.  Jesus, we know, rarely ventured into Gentile territory.  Then how did he and Mary meet?   We don’t know for certain just how or where or when.  Most likely Mary, a prosperous businesswoman, met Jesus as she travelled about on business. We know she was prosperous, since she was one of the well-to-do women, Luke tells us, who financed the band of disciples and supported our Lord himself.

She has always spoken to my heart.

I: — In the first place I have always been intrigued by the fact that seven devils had been cast out of her. “Seven” is the biblical symbol for wholeness or completeness or entirety.  To say that she had been possessed of seven devils is not to say that she was a harlot; it is to say, however, that the evil which riddled her was serious, persistent, and systemic.  It infected her wholly, like blood poisoning.

Mary would have had no difficulty believing the Reformation doctrine of Total Depravity.  I too have no difficulty believing that doctrine which my Reformation foreparents insisted the gospel of redemption presupposes as surely as surgical heart-transplant presupposes cardiac crisis.  Many people, however, repudiate the doctrine because they think it humanly demeaning or grossly exaggerated or simply untrue. Then let’s recall what our foreparents meant by it and what they didn’t.

When our Reformation ancestors spoke of total depravity they didn’t mean that people are worthless, vile, scum to be cast off as quickly as possible.  On the contrary they knew that all humankind has been created in the image and likeness of God and can never obliterate that image, never forfeit it, never efface it however much we manage to deface it. It isn’t in our power to forfeit a worth, a dignity that is inalienable just because God has stamped every last one of us with it.

And so far from believing that human beings, fallen human beings that we most certainly are, are capable of no good whatsoever, those who said most about Total Depravity (the Calvinists and all their theological cousins) did the most good everywhere in the world.  Calvinists, more than any other group of Christians, were ceaselessly active in education, politics and culture.

When our theological foreparents insisted that all humankind suffers from “total depravity” they never meant that we are all as thoroughly rotten as it’s possible to be.  (Myself, I’m convinced that if you and I put our minds to it and tried hard, we could behave worse, much worse, than we do already.)   Our foreparents knew that if we all behaved as wretchedly as we could then social existence would be impossible and the world uninhabitable. They never meant that we are morally “rotten to the core;” that the good we do is merely seeming good, only apparent good, only a disguise.

When our foreparents spoke of total depravity they did mean that there is no single area or aspect of my life that remains unaffected by sin.  My parenting my children isn’t sin-free; my marriage isn’t sin-free; neither is my daily work; neither is my interaction with other people.

Our foreparents meant too that there is no single dimension of the individual herself which remains unaffected by sin.  My reasoning is warped. (We call it rationalization.) My affections are warped. (I persistently love what I ought to loathe, and loathe what I ought to love.)   My will is corrupted. (Even when I know what I should do, I find that I can’t do it.)   Since scripture speaks of the individual’s “control centre,” what gathers up thinking, feeling, willing, discerning, as the “heart,” our foreparents meant by total depravity that everyone suffers from the gravest heart-defect.  The prophet Jeremiah cries, “The heart is deceitful above all things. Who can understand it?” The psalmist laments, “Everyone has gone astray; everyone without exception.” Our Reformation foreparents simply meant that every last person needs now and will always need God’s pardon, God’s gift of new life, God’s restoration and recovery and reorientation.

In the aftermath of World War II Albert Speer, the economist who became chief economics architect of the Hitler regime; Speer remarked, “If you think that the tragedy which Germany now is means that the German people are different from everyone else in the world, then you haven’t learned anything.”   Speer was right. Before we sanitize our reading of history we ought to understand that concentration camps weren’t a German invention.         The British invented concentration camps during the Boer War, and in those camps more Dutch Afrikaaners died than perished under enemy fire during combat.

I believe the doctrine of Total Depravity.  I have long been aware there’s no “corner” of me that can rescue the rest of me. I can’t think my way out of my sinnership, even though shallow rationalists tell me I can. I can’t will myself out of it, even though the power-trippers and control-“freaks” around me say it’s possible.  I can’t feel my way out of it, even though the romantics in our midst think the corruption of the human heart can be romanticized away.  I am aware that I am wholly, totally, constantly in need of God’s pardon and God’s renewal. When the prophet Ezekiel hears God promising a new heart and a new spirit, I know that God’s promise is my only hope and I had better look to him.

Mary Magdalene isn’t atypical with her “seven devils.” She is unusual, however, in her self-perception.  She knows what she is before God.  And of course she knows what he did for her in the person of his Son, the Nazarene whom she met and loved ever after.

II: — I resonate with Mary Magdalene for another reason.  Her gratitude impelled her to love Jesus and follow him forever.  We should always remember that the one, substantive item which the church has to offer the world isn’t a complex theory or complicated proposal or supposedly sure-fire “ism” of some sort; the church’s only substantive offer to the world is a person, the person of the living Lord Jesus Christ.  And this person all men and women everywhere are both summoned and invited to meet, love, adore, follow and serve.  At Christmas time we read a dozen times over the glorious text from the first chapter of John’s gospel: “The Word (God’s living self-utterance and self-bestowal) became flesh, and dwelt among us.” This is what we read; but what lurks within us is something very different: “The Word became words, and because the Word became words, we have all kinds of words to spew out, even though no one appears to find our words particularly interesting.”    The Word became flesh, in one man only, Jesus of Nazareth, crucified under Pontius Pilate, resurrected to life by the Father, and now the Father’s gift to everyone everywhere.

Mary knew all of this ahead of us.  Her heart always swelled at the name of Jesus.  He, not a theory or a formula or a proposal; he alone had turned her life around. Her gratitude for that unspeakable gift which her Lord was for her; this constrained her to love him, adore him, obey him, exalt him, and support him and his work any way she could.

It wasn’t difficult for her heart to go out to him. After all she, together with those like her won to the master, had found him winsome.  Jesus spoke of himself as “the good shepherd.”   The Greek word he uses for “good” means “good” plus “attractive, winsome, compelling, comely, inviting.” “I am the fine shepherd.”   The earliest Christians were attracted to Jesus as surely as they were repelled by the religious authorities.  Why weren’t the authorities attractive?         Jesus tells us why. “You load people down with backbreaking burdens, and then you don’t lift a finger to help them.”

Backbreaking burdens? Back then? What about now?   Two generations ago religious backbreakers had to do chiefly with crushing moralistic burdens. People were told that they hadn’t managed to achieve whatever it was they were supposed to achieve in order to merit the designation “Christian.”

Today the perfectionistic burdens aren’t moralistic; they are psychological.  People are told that if they are truly devout, real Christians, they will always have emotional tranquillity (did Jesus have tranquillity in the Garden of Gethsemane?); not so much as one minute (never mind forty days) of anxiety or confusion; never even a hint of perplexity or depression or grief. I’ve heard preachers tell people that “real” Christians are never afraid, never distressed, never stunned.  Burdens are added when not a finger is lifted to help.

I understand why people found religious spokespersons repellent and Jesus attractive.  Mary’s gratitude impelled her to cherish forever the One whose winsomeness left her unable to do anything else.

Once Mary became a disciple of Jesus, the light which he is shone ever more brightly amidst the murkiness surrounding her. Murkiness?   What murkiness surrounded her? Mary was a close friend of Joanna; Joanna was the wife of Herod’s chief administrative officer. Herod was corrupt. Joanna would have known all about political intrigue and institutional corruption; trade-offs between Herod and Pilate; collusion between the religious institution and the state; under-the-table deals and favours and blackmailings; all of this carried on behind closed doors in the dead of the night. Joanna, Mary’s friend, wouldn’t have failed to “spill” all this to Mary.  Mary knew how the world turned.         Murky as it all was and still is, however, Jesus Christ, the light of the world, penetrated the murkiness and cheered her, subdued the despair that lapped at her, sustained her in her conviction that the light he is will ever be truth despite the corruption which cares nothing for righteousness and cares nothing for the victims it leaves behind.

We know how the world turns.  We aren’t naïve. But neither are we overcome by the darkness and what happens in it.  Jesus Christ is light. He is always light enough to enlighten us as to the fact and nature of the darkness (very important — after all, if it weren’t for the light we’d never know that the darkness is dark.)   He is light enough to illumine our way so that we know how and where and why we are to walk (more important.)   He is light enough to light us up like a lighthouse that helps fetch others “home” (most important.)

It’s our gratitude to Jesus Christ that constrains us to love him and follow him.  As we do we are bathed in the light which he is even as we reflect his light upon others. This was Mary Magdalene’s experience before it was ours.

III: — Lastly, Mary was graced with a visitation and ignited with a vocation. The visitation occurred at the bleakest period of her life.  Bereaved of her Lord and grief-soaked as well, she had planned only to deodorize a corpse — when it happened: a visitation from the One who called her by name and then commissioned her to a service from which she would never shrink and of which she would never be ashamed.

I can’t tell you how much this moves me.  I’m always moved upon learning of the visitations and vocations of others, because it’s our common experience here that keeps us going when the way is rough and discouragements abound and bleakness settles upon us like pea-soup fog.

For years I have pondered the martyrdom of the first wave of Jesuits to die in Japan . Fired by the same Spirit as Ignatius Loyola, the 16^th century founder of the Jesuit order, the young men of the order (125 of them) who went to Japan in the 17^th century in order to reflect the light into the east found themselves set upon.  “Since you Christians are forever talking about the cross,” said their Japanese tormentors (the Japanese had never heard of crucifixion as a means of execution until missionaries acquainted them with the gospel story), “why don’t you try on the cross yourselves?” Whereupon the missionaries were impaled on crosses planted in shallow water at high tide. When they had died their bodies were knocked off the cross; the receding tide carried the bodies out to sea and spared their executioners the bother of having to bury them. What happened next? The Jesuit order sent another 125 men to Japan , men who like Mary were constrained to say, “I have seen the Lord.”

Our visitation and vocation may be less dramatic than that of those young men, and less dramatic again than Mary’s, yet ours is assuredly no less real.  We persist in our Christian service despite the incomprehension of people outside the church and the frustration awaiting us inside it.

Mary came back to the waiting disciples and primed them with her five-word message: “I have seen the Lord.” She primed them inasmuch as her visitation readied them for theirs when the risen One appeared to them later.

Certainly I don’t expect everyone’s visitation and vocation to be carbon copies of mine.  Nonetheless if I weren’t convinced that mine readied you for yours and helped you discern it and confirmed you in it; if I weren’t convinced of this then I wouldn’t be a minister of the gospel; I’d be only be a wordsmith.

It all came upon Mary Magdalene at the bleakest moment of her life. It moved her past that dark moment and freed her from the chilling paralysis that bleakness otherwise becomes.

Several years ago a young man who belonged to a Roman Catholic order spoke with the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta , hoping to get a sympathetic hearing from her.  “My vocation is to work with lepers,” he complained to her, “but the superior of my order persists in obstructing my vocation; he has rules and discipline and preparatory work and study and training and exercises, together with a thousand silly tasks and no fewer humiliations, all of which interfere with my vocation to spend myself now for lepers.”   Mother Teresa looked him in the eye for a few seconds and said, “Brother, your vocation isn’t to work with lepers; your vocation is to belong to Jesus.” She was correct. Our vocation, always, is first and last to belong to our Lord.  Within this meta-vocation, but only within it, it will be made plain to us specifically what belonging to Jesus will have us do.

Mary Magdalene. Someone whose total existence the Master turned around.  Someone whose gratitude moved her to follow forever the One whose winsomeness had melted her heart. Someone for whom visitation and vocation left her running with good news — “I have seen the Lord.” Someone whose good news has facilitated the calling to Christ of thousands like us who have heard her story.

I have loved her for years.

                                                                                                Victor Shepherd          

 July 2010 

Lake Joseph Community Church

Luke 8:45

I: — “To see and be seen,” said my grade nine geography teacher, “This is why people go to tourist beaches, to ski resorts, and to church; to see and be seen.” Perhaps he was right decades ago. Perhaps there was a day when some people came to church for this reason. They wanted to see; i.e., catch up on gossip. They wanted to be seen; i.e., preserve their standing in the community, even be able to do business on Monday. But we live in a different era now. Today no one comes to church for this reason.

Then why do people come to church? Curiosity might bring a few, but if curiosity brought them here it would never keep them here, because there isn’t much in church for curiosity seekers. We don’t traffic in oddities or secrets or spookiness. What the church traffics in happens to be simple, transparent, and highly repetitive. We sing hymns that congregations have sung for centuries; we read from a book that a child can read; we listen to an address that uses illustrations everywhere lest people go home mystified. I’m convinced that people come to church today largely for the same reason that the woman in our text stood, with scores of others, in a crowd. The reason, Luke tells us, was that she had heard reports about Jesus.

Reports about Jesus abounded in those days. We are told that the common people heard him gladly and turned out in droves at the same time that church leaders suspected him and conspired behind closed doors. One report about Jesus was that he was compassionate: no wonder people kept bringing their sick and disturbed to him. And yet as compassionate as he was, people wouldn’t have kept bringing their sick and disturbed to him unless he was more than compassionate, helpful as well, effective. People came to him, lingered with him, and then bound themselves to him for one reason: in his company they became different, life became different, the world became different, everything became different.

People come to church today, for the same reason. They have heard reports about Jesus. They have heard that he receives and helps, effectively helps, those whom life has jarred and jolted, even wounded and warped.

People are “shaken up” when they are surprised to discover they weren’t able to anticipate how they reacted to blows and irruptions and disruptions. To be sure, all of us try to anticipate how we are going to react when this happens to us or that happens to us. When the “this” or the “that” does happen, however, we discover that what we were able to anticipate in our heads we weren’t able to anticipate in our hearts. How we reacted had virtually nothing to do with how we had thought we were going to react. And now we fear irruptions in life as we didn’t fear them before.

The younger person, even the younger adult, unconsciously thinks himself to be invulnerable. If you sat him down and queried him about life’s vulnerabilities, he’d say, “Of course I’m aware that accident, disease, disaster can overtake anyone at any time. Do you think I’m naïve or stupid?” Still, what he admits with his conscious, reflective mind he hasn’t yet admitted with his unconscious mind. And it’s the unconscious mind that governs so very much of everyone’s life. Then one day something befalls him that drives home at all levels of his mind something he’d always admitted with his head but never with his heart: life is fragile, life is precarious, life is brief, life is subject to vulnerabilities that can never be rendered invulnerable.

For years we manage to live in the illusion that we are in control. We are in control of ourselves (of course); not only of ourselves but also of our family, of our colleagues, of a significant corner of our world. Then one day events force us to admit — finally — that while the sphere of our influence may be great, the sphere of our control is slight, very slight. And now we aren’t even sure we are in control of ourselves.

For years we remain untouched by grief in that we have suffered no overwhelming loss, and untouched by guilt if only because we think ourselves superior to everyone else. Then loss fuels grief, and a realistic awareness that our own garbage smells spawns guilt.

For years we listen to other people complain that they find life meaningless, we quietly pride ourselves on the fact that we don’t find it meaningless. One day, however, we realize that our problem isn’t life’s meaninglessness; our problem is life’s meanings: so many of them, so many that are incompatible, and in any case no single, true meaning, trustworthy meaning, eternal meaning.

II: — At this point we are like the woman in our text: “If I but touch the fringe of his clothes, I shall be made well; just the fringe.” In first century Palestine men wore their talith, their prayer shawl, as an undershirt. The prayer shawl therefore remained hidden under their workday clothing, except for the tassels at the four corners of the prayer shawl: these hung down below their workday shirt. The needy woman felt that by grasping these she was making contact with him, and this would be sufficient. It would be enough just to make contact. There’d be no need to spout elaborate introductions or offer effusive explanations. Besides, she was a woman and he was a man; men and women didn’t converse in public. Besides, she was suffering from an ailment that made others in the community shrink from her; better to say nothing, act boldly, and see what happens next. All she wanted to do was make contact. What’s more, the four tassels symbolized the truth that the Word of God reaches to the four corners of the earth. If it really reaches to the four outermost corners of the earth, she thought, perhaps it reaches to my tiny corner of the earth, me.

Let’s not deceive ourselves. People at their profoundest don’t come to church because of something about us. They come because they have heard reports concerning Jesus Christ, and they’ve been told that this building and this institution have something to do with him and may even help them make contact with him. People at their profoundest come to church because they think that their chances of meeting him and finding help are better here.

I’m convinced it’s no different with us whom have been coming to church for a long time and will continue to come. To be sure, there is much here that appears to have little to do with reaching out to touch our Lord: shingling the roof, gassing the furnace, paying the light bill. The truth is, however, all of these matters have everything to do with making contact with him. It is for this purpose only that we shingle the roof and gas the furnace and pay the light bill.

The woman in our text again: what did she think that merely touching our Lord was going to do for her? Was there an element, or more than an element, of superstition in what she did? There may have been. If there was, I’m sure our Lord would have corrected it eventually; he wouldn’t have allowed her to go on touching him as if she were pressing a button that gave her a charge. He wouldn’t have allowed her to keep pawing him mechanically as though voodoo-like superstition could ever substitute for spiritual maturity. Over and over in the written gospels Jesus moves people beyond an understanding, misunderstanding, of him that is so woefully immature as to be spiritually threatening. When the mother of James and John wanted positions of privilege for her two sons Jesus told her she was asking the wrong question; she should have been asking if her two sons were resilient enough to endure the long-term rigours of discipleship without quitting. Of course he would expect an apprehension of him deeper than feeling the fringes of his prayer shawl. He would have corrected the woman eventually; but he didn’t correct her instantly.

For our Lord knows something we must never forget: before we can begin to mature we have to be born. Before we step ahead maturely in the Christian life, we have to take a first step. And the difference between no step and first step is a quantum leap. In short, there are two dangers we must avoid. One danger is expecting ourselves and others to exhibit exemplary spiritual maturity without first having touched our Lord. When this happens we expect people to swim confidently in the waters of Christian wisdom and devotional richness and spiritual discernment and self-renouncing service when in fact they can’t swim at all. They splash around for a while repeating formulas they don’t understand and pursuing a pathway they find pointless until one day they give up the whole thing and we never see them in church again. The other danger is making contact, all right, and then fixating ourselves at an infantile level of Christian understanding and venture, content to make contact, plainly enough, but never moving on to that maturity in Christ which Paul says is ultimately the goal of Christian ministry.

III: — The woman touches Jesus. “Who touched me?” he says. “Someone has touched me. Who is it?” The disciples remind him that the crowd resembles the subway train at rush hour: people are squeezed together so tightly that anyone who faints won’t even fall down. Who has touched him? Who hasn’t touched him? The question is silly.

Except that it isn’t. “Some one person has touched me,” Jesus insists. “Within this crowd there is some one person who has moved from observing me and assessing me to contacting me. Who is it?”

Today our society seems on the point of forgetting what richness the gospel has brought the society in terms of our understanding of the person, and how quickly that gospel-inspired leaven can depart the society.

Think of the hideousness that Marxism fostered. In the Marxist set-up the individual person counts for nothing. The collective counts for everything. The individual has no rights at all. The individual has merit only because of the individual’s place in the collective. Any exploitation of the individual, however cruel or even deadly, is legitimate if it serves the greater good (so-called) of the collective. You don’t need me to tell you of the forced labour camps in Siberia and the Gulag system and Stalin’s systematic starvation of twelve million people in the Ukraine and the 30 to 60 million people that the secret police took down.

Think of a spectacle seen every day in India . I saw it myself. Someone collapses on the street, manifestly ill. People step around her or step over her but don’t stop to help her. After all, fate, the gods, have willed that she be stricken at this moment, fall in this position, and remain there. To lend assistance is to defy what the gods have willed and therein to court the gods’ displeasure. Therefore wise people leave the victim alone. On my first day in India I came upon a dog that had been dead for several days. Maggots were crawling in and out of the carcase. It stank unimaginably. But no one had buried the carcase. After all, the gods had appointed the dog to die in that position and be left there.

And then I think of a parishioner in my Mississauga congregation who suffered a major heart attack. He was sustained by the most up-to-date medical wizardry, was given a heart transplant, and underwent many more surgeries until his chest and abdomen resembled a quilt. The cost of all this, borne by the taxpayer, approached the national debt. While he was mending from the heart transplant he had to have his gall bladder removed. Only seven years later he died anyway. Yet no one ever said of him, “He isn’t worth it. People die of heart trouble every day. What’s so special about him? Besides, he’s costing too much. Let him go.” No one even whispered this.

How long do you think such situations will continue once our society has become thoroughly secularized and the indirect illumination of the gospel has disappeared entirely?

I have said several times over that in a Marxist collectivity the individual is worthless. True. The reason the individual is worthless here is that the individual isn’t a person; the individual is merely a cog in a giant machine, and any cog can replace any other cog. The individual isn’t a person.

Strictly speaking, ancient Greek philosophy knew of the individual; it did not, however, know of the person. The notion of the person is the church’s gift to the world. The difference is this: the individual is an individual in herself, but a person is always person-in-relation. So far as the individual is concerned, to be is to be; but so far as the person is concerned, to be is to be-in-relation. To exist as a person is never the same as existing as an individual. Ancient Greek philosophy spoke of the individual but never of the person. The church knew the difference and insisted that every last human being is a person.

Admittedly, there are some human beings whose lives are wretched. They appear to be friendless. They appear to be isolated. They appear to be abandoned, forsaken. But in fact there is no human being anywhere, at any time, who is ultimately abandoned and finally forsaken, just because there is no human being whom God doesn’t cherish.

We must be sure we see the woman in our story in proper context. She reached out to touch our Lord — intentionally, wilfully, deliberately seeking help. Others didn’t. Then did they lack all relation to Jesus Christ? Do such people still? The truth is, in his death our Lord embraced every last human being without exception, without qualification, without reservation, without hesitation. Because of his embrace every human being is a person with respect to him. Remember, to be is to be-in-relation. The arms of the crucified ensure not only that individuals are individuals rather than faceless cogs in a cosmic machine; the arms of the crucified ensure that no one is finally forsaken, no one ultimately abandoned, no one bereft of that “other” who guarantees that all individuals are, more profoundly still, persons.

The church’s gift to the world here is breathtaking, and nowadays most of the world doesn’t know by whom the gift was given. What will be the shape, the texture, of our society if, when, the indirect illumination of the gospel recedes and the society is left not even with the wisdom that ancient Greek philosophy could muster, but merely with the new barbarism that looms around us?

Myself, I’m convinced that the indirect illumination still lighting our society might remain if the church continues to hold up the direct lighting of the gospel. Only the gospel insists that this one person matters inestimably to God just because only the gospel (all human beings exist in relation to Jesus Christ) insists that all persons are persons.

You and I are at worship this morning for many different reasons. One reason, surely, is that we want to make contact with our Lord again. Centuries ago a needy woman, a courageous woman, reached out and grabbed the tassels of his prayer shawl, believing thereby she would find in him what she needed most.

“Who has touched me?” Jesus responded. She had. She mattered supremely to him; but ultimately no more than all of us matter to him, for he has first touched us all with outstretched arms, thereby rendering us persons whose worth, importance and gifts are beyond price.

We in the church know this. By coming here today we want to remind the wider society of this truth lest our society forget it and thereby imperil everyone.

                                                                                                    Dr Victor Shepherd                                                                                             

March 2003

Luke 10:25-37

I: “What’s yours is mine; I’ll take it.”

The robbers who assaulted the traveller shamelessly told the world how life should be approached: “What’s yours is mine; I’ll take it.” They were criminals; violent criminals as well. They didn’t hesitate to beat a man half to death in order take what they wanted. Clearly they operated outside the law.

We must not think, however, that everyone who shares their approach to life operates outside the law. Most operate within the law. They will never go to jail. They will never taste social rejection. In fact they will often be congratulated. After all, everyone who agrees with “What’s yours is mine; I’ll take it” compliments those who succeed.

The chartered banks write off millions of dollars every year. Bank employees pilfer it. Plainly they are stealing what belongs to customers. The department stores lose millions of dollars of merchandise every year. Employees thieve it. (Employees are responsible for 90% of shoplifting.)

And then there is the person who does work for us and asks to be paid in cash rather than by cheque. In other words, he plans to pay no income tax — which is to say, he plans to defraud every other taxpayer.

What is government-sanctioned gambling except another instance of “What’s yours is mine; I’ll take it”? Our foreparents in Israel regarded gambling as theft. Were they correct, even if gambling is theft by mutual consent? Wherever governments have introduced casino gambling several things have ensued. One, the gambling operation is immediately taken over by the underworld. Two, the social and moral deterioration that follows is as undeniable as it is uncorrectable. (We should note that the day the government of Ontario introduced its gambling operation it cancelled its psychiatric assistance program for gambling addicts.) Three, casino gambling boosts related underworld activities: loansharking (someone has to lend overzealous gamblers large sums of money), narcotics-trafficking, prostitution, extortion.

At the same time “What’s yours is mine; I’ll take it” is an approach exemplified by many who are not financially corrupt. It is the approach of someone who won’t keep her hands off someone else’s husband, of someone else who thinks he can “swipe” another man’s reputation and turn it to his own advantage. It’s the approach of any jealous person who thinks that by crumbling someone else she can magnify herself.

“What’s yours is mine; I’ll take it” is the approach of robbers, however polite and respectable they may be.

II: “What’s mine is mine; I’ll keep it”

The priest and the Levite (Levites were priests attached to a local congregation) had a different approach to life: “What’s mine is mine; I’ll keep it.” In some respects the two clergymen were nastier than the robbers. After all, the robbers did not pretend to be anything but nasty. They never pretended to be concerned with suffering people. They didn’t claim to know that God is wounded in the wounds of all who are made in his image.

The priest and the Levite were ordained. People called them “reverend”, perhaps also “doctor” if they were especially learned. They liked the sound of it all. The titles gave them special recognition and privileged status in the community.

As soon as they saw the beaten man their finely-trained minds hummed even faster as they brought forward reason after reason, each entirely defensible, as to why couldn’t help at that moment, why other matters were more pressing, why their vocation didn’t permit them to be distracted by mundane matters.

Nevertheless the reasons their subtle intellects brought forward were all rationalizations. The real reason (of which they were unaware, needless to say) was that they were stingy. “What’s mine I need”, they nodded knowingly to each other, “and therefore I had better keep it.”

This approach to life is more common than we think. A few years ago, when the Canadian government permitted each tax-payer to claim $100 tax exempt for charitable donations, it was found that only one per cent of Canadians donated at least $100 per year to causes which help and heal.

Do you know who are the most generous people in Canada? The poorest! People whose incomes are in the bottom 20% of the nation’s give away a much higher percentage of their disposable incomes than do those in the top 20%.

At the same time “What’s mine is mine; I’ll keep it” controls many besides those who are financially stingy. How many marriages have melted down just because one partner (or both) insisted ever more loudly, “What’s mine is mine”?

Or think about those who complain that they have no friends. Although they do not know it, the reason they have no friends is their refusal to acknowledge the claim of a friendship. Friendship involves giving as well as taking; it involves making a sacrifice as well as absorbing benevolence. At times our best friend will frustrate us or annoy us or even irk us. Our friends inconvenience us. They want us to help them paint their new house the day we had planned to go fishing. They insist on calling us late at night because they are upset even though we are so tired we want only to fall into bed. Nonetheless, unless we are willing to honour the claim of a friendship we shall never have friends.

“What’s mine is mine; I’ll keep it” sounds smart and cagey and self-protective. In reality it is self-destructive, for it leaves us devoid of human intimacy; which is to say, it leaves us isolated, alienated, destitute.

III: “What’s mine is yours; I’ll share it”

The beaten, bleeding man lying in the road would never have expected help from a Samaritan. After all, Samaritans were half-breeds with weird religious ideas. They were as unlike the urbane citizens of Jerusalem as snake-handling hillbillies from the Ozarks are unlike us. Still, the half-breed “weirdo” shone where others did not. Our Lord tells us they exemplified a kingdom-truth: “What’s mine is yours; I’ll share it.”

Look at what the Samaritan did.

He risked himself. When he stopped to help the injured fellow he had to linger in an area frequented by cutthroats. (The men who had beaten the traveller might still be in the vicinity.) In dismounting from his horse he gave up the one means of speeding through the infested area.

He rendered a personal service. He didn’t merely make a referral or phone an institution, all the while ensuring that his hands were never soiled and his clothes bloodstain-free. Instead he rendered a personal service as soon as compassion electrified his heart. He knew the difference between social assistance and self-involvement.

He made a costly sacrifice. Certainly he was late for his appointment — may have missed it entirely — when he carted the victimized man to an inn and spend the night there too. Certainly he paid for the night’s accommodation (times two) out of his own pocket. Certainly his clothes had to be dry-cleaned if not replaced.

And all of this he did anonymously, not wishing to be recognized or congratulated or bemedalled or made a fuss of in any way. Neither did he exploit the opportunity of helping the helpless as an occasion for drawing attention to himself.

Perhaps the biggest sacrifice he made was simply fighting down deep-dyed prejudice and loathing when he, a Samaritan, came to the assistance of a despised Jew.

“What’s mine is yours; I’ll share it.”

                                                                                                    Victor Shepherd

Luke 12:13-21

For the past ten years we’ve been hearing that the provincial government has to continue cutting the provincial budget on big-ticket items. Hospitals, schools, universities, municipalities: they may receive a little more from the present government than they received from the previous, but the cuts in provincial pay-outs can’t be reversed entirely, since the province is now paying out one million dollars per hour more than it takes in. The gravy-train has derailed, and the government is hoping that the residents of Ontario will understand that it has derailed.

Even as we admit that the gravy-train has derailed we should also admit that there never was as much gravy in the train as we wanted to think or were led to think. For decades we Canadians have spent vastly more money on ourselves than we ever earned. Collectively we have lived beyond our means for years.

In saying this I don’t mean that all of the material prosperity we soaked up came to us only because we were living beyond our means. A few years ago our “means” were genuinely greater. For instance, for years 20% of Canada ‘s Gross National Product came from the development of non-renewable resources, such as copper ore or nickel ore. I support such development. Copper ore is of no use to anyone as long as it remains in the ground. We were right to mine it and sell it. At the same time we must realize that once it’s been mined it’s gone for ever. Copper doesn’t reproduce itself in the ground the way wheat reproduces itself in a field or beef cattle reproduce themselves in a barn.

Then will our children find life financially leaner than we have known it? On average, yes. You see, ever since Confederation (1867) each generation of Canadians has been approximately twice as wealthy as the previous generation. I am twice as wealthy as my parents; they were twice as wealthy as their parents. Then our children should be twice as wealthy as we. But here the pattern is broken. Social scientists tell us that the next generation, on average, won’t be twice as wealthy as we are. In fact, for the first time in Canada ’s history, the next generation will be less wealthy than we are. This doesn’t mean that the next generation will suffer from inadequate nutrition, clothing or shelter. The next generation will find, however, that it has less money for trifles and trinkets and toys.

Is this bad? Is it bad to have fewer trinkets and toys? As a matter of fact the leaner finances for most Canadians will be a spiritual boon. Material superabundance, Jesus reminds us everywhere in the written gospels, is a spiritual threat; a grave spiritual threat, graver even than material scarcity. In fact our Lord maintains that material superabundance is the gravest spiritual threat of all.

How grave a threat? What kind of threat? Jesus answers our questions in his parable that generations after him have called “The Parable of the Rich Fool”.

I: — “The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully, and it made the rich man richer still,” the parable begins. “And the rich man — now super-rich — thought to himself…” He thought to himself? The Greek verb is DIALOGIZOMAI, from which we derive the English word “dialogue”. The super-affluent man dialogued with himself; he debated with himself; he deliberated with himself; he weighed all the considerations; he approached the topic from ever so many angles. So intent is he on dialoguing, debating, deliberating with himself; so consumed is he with weighing, assessing, calculating, estimating, measuring; so preoccupied is he with his fortune that he’s — just that: preoccupied, consumed. He can’t think of anything else besides his new-found fortune. He doesn’t care to think of anything else. He doesn’t even think there might be something else to think about.

What exactly is preoccupying him? One matter: how he might hoard for himself what’s been dumped in his lap.

(i) The first thing we notice about the fellow is that his possessions absorb him. He can think only of what he owns: how to measure it, how to maximize it, how to multiply it — ultimately, how to preserve it and protect it and protract it. He’s a hoarder; he gives nothing away. There isn’t an ounce of generosity in him for the simple reason that he doesn’t care a whit about anyone else, so “thingified” is his heart.

(ii) The second thing we notice about him is that he’s an egotist. In the space of a few lines, according to the parable, he speaks of himself, “I,” repeatedly; “I,I,I” eight times over.

(iii) The third thing we notice about him is that he’s a secularist. The world he lives in is a world bounded by the material, the human, the finite. There’s no vertical dimension to his world, no room for anything other than the horizontal. Matter, mammon, man; human history understood no more profoundly than the never-ending scramble for social ascendancy. He doesn’t regard all of this as supremely important; he regards it as solely important, since for him this alone constitutes life.

As if it were going to last forever! As if his one-dimensional life were going to last forever! As if his secularist viewpoint were the only possible viewpoint for anyone with even a modicum of intelligence! As if? But secularists never say “as if”, just because it never occurs to them that their one-dimensional universe might be merely their invention; just because it never occurs to them that their perception might be arbitrary, shallow and false.

The man our Lord speaks of in the parable — thing-absorbed, egotistical and thorough-going secularist; this man has a problem. He himself is aware that he has a problem. His one problem, he thinks, is this. “Now that I, an affluent fellow, am eversomuch more affluent, how am I going to retain my increased, socio-economic advantage? Right now I am financially privileged. How can I perpetuate it?” The man has a problem, and the thinks that this is his only problem.

Very soon, of course, Jesus Christ will let us all know, all us hearers of the parable, what the man’s real problem is. And what is his real problem? What his real problem is he can’t even guess.

III: — “But God said to him.” BUT GOD SAID TO HIM. His real problem is that God has spoken to him. Suddenly the vertical dimension to all of life (he never dreamt there was a vertical dimension to all of life) thrusts itself upon him. It was there all along, of course. Now, however, it’s staring him in the face. Now it’s as undeniable as it is unmistakable. BUT GOD SAID TO HIM — and obviously God said it in a very loud voice. Suddenly the fellow’s world is exposed as too small, too narrow, too shallow, too anaemic, too flat. When God speaks, the universe expands in a hurry; when God speaks, the universe expands hugely; it expands immeasurably as surely as God himself is immeasurable. It isn’t merely that “a new dimension,” even a vertical dimension, has been added; it’s rather that when God speaks, all of life is revolutionized.

Think of the woman at the well in John 4. She meets Jesus and chitchats humorously with him, banters with him, even flirts with him. She’s enjoying it all, never expecting it to end on a jarring note, when suddenly Jesus breaks off the banter and says, “Go call your husband.” She stares at him, knowing that he has seen through her disguise. He has crumbled all the defenses she has spent years perfecting. And all he has done is speak to her. “Go call your husband.” “I don’t have a husband,” she barely croaks out; “Do we have to talk about this?” When the woman encountered Jesus at the well she thought she had a problem: she thought her problem was that she lacked a bucket of water for household tasks. That’s why she had gone to the well. Once the master has spoken to her, however, she’s aware that her real problem is something else, something eversomuch deeper.

The man in the parable we are listening to today: “BUT GOD SAID TO HIM.” Said what? What did God say?

“You fool.” In modern English a fool is someone who lacks sound judgement. Then is this man merely possessed of unsound judgement? No. There’s more to be said. In older English “foolish” means “mad, insane.” “Foolish” is derived from the French word “fol,” and “fol” means mad, insane, psychotic. The mad person, the psychotic person, is someone whose reality-testing is severely impaired.

“But God said to him, ‘You fool.’” The man didn’t merely lack sound judgement; rather, with respect to the reality of God his reality-testing was severely impaired. With respect to the reality of God his perception of reality was skewed, so badly skewed as to be non-existent. What he had always regarded as self-evident (a one-dimensional universe) was now exposed as untrue. What he had regarded as reality (a life whose only purpose was greater and greater ease born of greater and greater affluence) was now exposed as illusory. On the other hand, what he had always regarded as illusory (the truth of God and the penetration of God and heart-seizure at the hand of God); this was now exposed as real.

“You fool!” Wherein had he been a fool? He had certainly been ungrateful. When his bumper crop had come along it had never occurred to him to think of (let alone thank) the one who sustains the universe and sends seedtime and harvest.

Moreover, his head and his heart had become thoroughly “thingified.” He had planned to store up goods for his soul, for his innermost life, stupidly thinking that goods had anything to do with his innermost life.

Moreover, he had planned to take his ease, never to work again. Most importantly, he gave no consideration to kingdom-work, the sort of thing Jesus meant when he said, “We must work while it is day, for the night comes when no one can work.” He hadn’t had a clue about kingdom-work and hadn’t wanted to have.

God had said more to him than “You fool!”, however. God had also said, “Tonight you must die.” The fellow had never factored his mortality into what he was making of his life. If he ever thought about dying at all he dismissed the notion as soon as it intruded. He was too busy planning how to hoard to bother with having to die. Therefore he was a fool twice over.

God had said even more to him: “All that stuff that has cluttered your life and corroded your heart — who gets it now? If you have lived for it, then you have lived for nothing, because now you must surrender it.” And so he was a fool three times over.

IV: — Needless to say, the point in learning wherein the rich fool was a fool is to be sure that we don’t follow him foolishly ourselves. The point in learning wherein he thought he was rich only to find himself poor; the point is to become rich ourselves. Jesus concludes the parable by urging us to become “rich towards God,” rich in God. In other words, our one good, our eternal good, is to be rich in God.

I crave such richness myself. I continue to crave it for two reasons. One reason is that I have “tasted” (to use a vivid biblical expression); I have “tasted and seen that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8) The taste I have had (and enjoy now) isn’t the taste of a tiny tidbit on the tip of the tongue. The taste I have had has satisfied me so thoroughly as to leave me wanting to look nowhere else and pursue no one else. And yet as often as I have tasted, the taste has left me hungering for more: always satisfied, never satiated; always supplied, never surfeited. In all of this I have never doubted that it is GOD with whom I have to do, not my overheated imagination, not a fantasy, not a projection from an unconscious “wish-list.” How do I know it is GOD with whom I have to do? Encounter with God is self-authenticating. Since God is who he is, there is nothing above him — and therefore nothing above him by means of which he is proved (or disproved). Because there is nothing above God, nothing greater than God, there is nothing apart from God that can authenticate him; and when he seizes any one of us, there is nothing apart from him that is needed to authenticate him. Were we to ask a Hebrew prophet of old how he knew that it was God who had seized him, the prophet of old would have said two things: one, our asking the question suggests we are not yet “seized” ourselves; two, seizure at the hand of God is as self-authenticating as seeing an object convinces us of the object’s size and colour and shape. When we see an object we are convinced without further argumentation as to its size and colour and shape.

It’s difficult for me to say more without exposing myself to the charge of spiritual exhibitionism. At the same time I cannot say less without failing to testify of him whom Jeremiah says is fire in his mouth, before whom Daniel could only fall on his face, and for whom David cried out as he cried out for nothing else.

Many times from this pulpit I have said that the characteristic of the Holy One of Israel is that he speaks. Not that he yammers, not that he jabbers or blabbers or chitchats, but that he speaks. Then has he spoken to me? Yes. Many different words. A word of judgement upon my sin, which word has left me weeping brokenheartedly, like Peter, except that no one else was around to see it, not even my wife. He has also spoken to me words of pardon, of encouragement, of direction, of exhilaration. The psalmist says, “At God’s right hand are pleasures for ever more,” and I have found the psalmist true a hundred times over. A relentless word from him, a summons that I have found inextinguishable and inescapable since I was 14, is my vocation to the ministry.

Because I have “tasted and seen that the Lord is good” I cannot doubt him but can only want more of him. This is one reason I crave being richer in God, as Jesus urges us to be.

The second reason is that I have been drawn into the heart and head of several people who were immersed so deep in God they exuded it. Simply to have encountered these people was to know they weren’t misled themselves and wouldn’t mislead others. When they spoke to me of God they spoke naturally, unselfconsciously, without affectation or artificiality or phoniness.

One such person was the late Ronald Ward, professor of New Testament at the University of Toronto , an Anglican who used to help me with the finer points of Greek syntax. When I called on him, ready to be schooled in the seven uses of the infinitive or the fivefold significance of the subjunctive mood, he would help me in these matters, to be sure. Then he would sit back in his chair and casually, completely unintentionally, overwhelm me with his oh-so-believable intimacy with our Lord. “Do you know why most ministers want to preach no more than ten minutes these days?” he asked me once; “It’s because they can relate their entire experience of Christ in ten minutes.” If Ronald Ward had had one hundred years to acquaint me with his experience of our Lord, it wouldn’t have been long enough.

In this respect Ward resembled the apostle Paul. Paul’s vocabulary wasn’t stunted in the least, yet rich as it was it couldn’t do justice to the fathomless riches of Christ. For this reason when the apostle could say no more he used the word “unsearchable” or “immeasurable;” “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8) or “the immeasurable riches of his grace.” (Eph. 2:7) No wonder he could speak of himself and others as “having nothing, yet possessing everything.” (2 Cor. 6:10) To be exposed to men and women like this is to crave being rich (or richer) in God.

One thing I never want to do is suggest that all of this is reserved for the clergy. The fact that I speak about it from a pulpit doesn’t mean for a minute that you are excluded from it. On the contrary, I speak knowing that hearers in front of me will resonate as the same truth reverberates within them.
For this reason it is fitting that we conclude our discussion about what it is to be “rich towards God” with a few lines from one of the books of my friend, Ronald Ward, in which he speaks of preacher and congregation facing each other, together rejoicing alike in their common Lord:

“When he [the preacher] proclaims Christ there will be an answering note in the hearts of those who have tasted that the Lord is gracious. When he mentions the wrath of God they will be with him in remembering that they too were once under the wrath and by the mercy of God have been delivered. When he speaks of the Holy Spirit they will rejoice in Him who brought Christ to their hearts with His fruit of joy. When he speaks of the church they will dwell on that vast company of the redeemed which has responded to God’s call and has received Christ, the multitude which no man can number of those who are His peculiar treasure. When he speaks of the word of the cross they will welcome the open secret of the means of their salvation. And when he gives an invitation to sinners to come to Christ, they will create the warm and loving atmosphere which is the fitting welcome for one who is coming home.”

Victor Shepherd

Luke 12:51

I: — “War is hell”, said General Sherman, a USA Civil War commander. It is. The material losses are staggering. It was Sherman himself who set fire to the city of Atlanta , Georgia , and burnt it to the ground. Worse than the material losses, however, are the physical pain and dismemberment and disability — too horrible to dwell on. Beyond the physical distresses are the psychiatric horrors. We hear less about the psychiatric horrors of war, if only because they are less visible to the public. For all that, however, they are no less horrible. After all, in World War II psychiatric breakdown was the single largest reason for honourable discharge from the armed forces. Any combatant’s chances of psychiatric collapse (from the American Civil War right up to Israel ‘s invasion of Lebanon in 1982) are three times greater than his likelihood of being killed. When the U.S. army landed in Sicily in the 1940s there were platoons where the psychiatric breakdown was 100%. Military psychiatrists have found that the only combatant who doesn’t collapse however long he is under fire is the full-blown psychopath. War is dreadful.

Then what does Jesus have in mind when he says, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? I haven’t come to bring peace, but a sword, division”? It’s all the more startling in view of the fact that the apostles speak of our Lord as the prince of peace. Indeed, the announcement made to the shepherds at his birth was “peace on earth.” And then a few years later he is telling us that he hasn’t come to bring peace on earth? Then what does he mean when he insists that he’s come to bring strife?

II: — We begin to understand our Lord as we remember that he stood in the line of Israel ‘s prophets. Certainly the prophets longed for shalom, God’s definitive peace, nothing less than the entire creation healed. Yet just as surely the prophets knew that there can never be peace without justice. Any attempt at promoting peace without first doing justice is fraudulent.

For years we engaged in polite conversations that discussed the situation in South Africa . “Why can’t black people and white people simply get along together? Why can’t they live at peace?” But there can be no real peace without justice. Peter Botha, the former prime minister, maintained that his people, white people, would never dismantle apartheid willingly. Apartheid began to crumble only when the economic gun was held to the head of white South Africa . Yet holding a gun of any sort to someone’s head is scarcely evidence of peace.

A common misunderstanding always lurking in the church is that Jesus is always and everywhere the great “smoother-over”. Whenever he found antagonistic people or tense situations he smoothed things over. The written gospels, however, paint a very different picture. According to the gospels wherever Jesus went there was a disruption.

Jesus comes upon some orthodox folk who care more for their religious reputations and their supposed religious superiority than they will ever care for personal integrity and transparency before God. To them Jesus says, “You people go halfway around the world to lasso one convert, and when you finally get him you make him twice as much a child of hell as you are yourselves.” Disruption. Next day Jesus comes upon some people who think they have preferential status before God just because they are Israelites. “There were many widows in Israel in the days when Jezebel, wicked woman, was seeking the prophet Elijah in order to kill him”, says Jesus. “But who took Elijah , Israel ‘s greatest prophet, into her home and provided sanctuary for him at terrible risk to herself? A widow from a nation you Israelites pronounce ‘godless.'” Another disruption.

III: — The truth is, wherever Jesus went there was conflict. Yet Jesus never caused trouble for the sake of causing trouble. He didn’t have a personality disorder that gloated over being a disturber. He caused a disruption only in order that his hearers might finally hear and heed and do the truth of God, therein finding the profoundest peace of God. Whenever our Lord caused pain he did so only in order that the people whom he plunged into greater pain might submit themselves to the great physician himself. Whenever God’s truth is held up in a world of falsehood there is going to be disruption. There has to be disruption if the shalom of God is going to appear.

Surely this isn’t difficult to understand. We know that the person whose medical condition is making her uncomfortable must undergo treatment that will make her even more uncomfortable — at least for a while — if she is ever going to get better. It’s the same with psychotherapy. If we are distressed by the emotional distortions that haunt us, we have to own the distortions with their attendant pain, and finding ourselves feeling worse — at least for a while — before we find relief.

IV: — Let us make no mistake. Jesus insists we own him our ultimate love and loyalty. He, his word, his kingdom, his way, and his truth: this must take first place in our lives. As we honour our Lord’s pre-eminent claim upon our life, love, and loyalty, other loves and loyalties will have to take second place. Some of them won’t like this. Jesus warns us of this and leaves us with a reminder so stark we can’t forget it: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me; whoever loves son or daughter more than me isn’t worthy of me.” Our own family members may resent him and us when they see that they don’t have first claim on us and aren’t going to have.

When Father Damien announced that he was leaving his home in Belgium to work with lepers on the island of Molokai , dot in middle of the Pacific Ocean , do you think that his mother leapt for joy? I am sure she reminded him tartly that he should be a little more considerate of her widowhood. After all, if he wanted to be a priest he could be a priest just as readily in Belgium as he could in the Hawaiian Islands , couldn’t he? Sinners are sinners, after all, so why bother abandoning her and endangering himself to work with leper-sinners? Furthermore, if he wanted to work with despised people, outcasts, there was certainly no shortage of such people in Europe . What’s more, why not let a priest who was already leprosy-riddled minister to the men on Molokai ? Yet the voice of Jesus reverberated in Damien’s heart: “He who loves father or mother more than me isn’t worthy of me. A man’s foes will be those of his own household. Whoever doesn’t take up his cross and obey me can’t be my disciple.” Damien knew he had to go to Molokai . And if some members of his family couldn’t understand why and faulted him for going, that wasn’t his problem.

My own mother and father knew that parents can get in the way of that discipleship to which God has called their son or daughter; they can unwittingly deflect their child’s first love and loyalty away from Jesus Christ. Parents have plans for their children, haven’t they? Grand plans, more often than not. Parents can wish for their child a life of greater ease, greater comfort, greater remuneration, less renunciation than God ordains for their child in view of the service to which God is calling their child. Knowing this, my parents made a public declaration, concerning me, in a service of public worship when I was only six weeks old. They declared that as far as they were able they would never deflect me from any obedience and service to Jesus Christ and to his kingdom that my vocation might entail. Once in a while I read over the words that were read aloud to my parents and to which my parents replied, “We promise.” Here they are. “You must be willing that Victor Allan should spend all his life for God wherever God should choose to send him, and not withhold him at any time from such hardship, suffering, want or sacrifice as true devotion to the service of Christ may entail.” My parents knew that if they nurtured me to be a disciple of Jesus Christ; that is, if they nurtured me give him my ultimate love and loyalty yet subtly, even unknowingly, wanted my final allegiance to be to them and their plans for me, then they would find that Jesus hadn’t brought peace to the Shepherd household but rather a sword.

We shouldn’t assume that our Lord can cause a disruption only in families; he causes disruptions in any social grouping: friends, colleagues, club mates, workmates. One of my friends, a schoolteacher, was admitted to the principal-track. The board of education sent him on a principal’s summer course in Peterborough . Virtually everyone on the course was married; virtually no one behaved this way. There were pairings-off and six-week liaisons and experiments in group-this and group-that, as well as visits to a nightclub whose chief entertainment was tableside nude dancers. My friend excused himself from all of this as gently and quietly as he could. He tried extra-hard not to point the finger at anyone. Nastily he was queried as to why he wasn’t participating. He said simply that what he was asked to do he believed to contradict his Christian profession; which profession, he added, he wasn’t expecting anyone else to make. Immediately the other principal-trainees on the course fell on him. He was told he was a self-righteous prig, a do-gooder, a “brown-noser.” It was suggested he was trying to accumulate merit points that he could cash in for Board of Education promotion. He was resented inasmuch as others felt he now had information on them that was scarcely going to improve their reputations or enhance their marriages. He was threatened that he had better be wise enough to know when to keep his mouth shut. The mood on the summer course had become sheer hostility. Jesus Christ had brought a sword. And the discomfort my friend had to endure for the remainder of the course was the cross he had to take up.

V: — Yet I mustn’t leave you with the impression that discipleship is onerous or chafing. The opposite is the case. Jesus promised he would reward — hugely — anyone who cherished him and stood with him in all circumstances at whatever cost. He promised that such people are going to “find” their life. Even crossbearing, a necessary part of intimacy with Jesus, will become not a living death (as so many expect) but the infusion of life that makes life life. Our Lord keeps his promises. Whoever follows him and stands with him and endures whatever unpopularity or abuse all of this might entail, this person he will hold up and honour and bless; this person he will never abandon or let down or betray.

We hear a great deal today about people who decided it’s time they “found” themselves. The have never found themselves, they feel, and time is slipping away on them. Usually they assume that the root to finding themselves is to veer suddenly in a startlingly new direction. Too often they veer impulsively into a poorly thought-out career change or spouse change. They do something quixotic, bizarre. They may even do something that they think will prove unusually titillating. At the end of it all they are jaded, and are no closer to finding themselves.

Today in worship we read our Lord’s piercing question as recorded in Luke’s gospel. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus follows his question with his ringing declaration losing one’s life and finding it. There he insists that there’s only one way we are ever going to find ourselves: we have to forget ourselves. Yet we are to forget ourselves not in an attitude or self-belittlement or self-contempt; we are to “forget” ourselves only because we have become preoccupied with him and his kingdom and all we must be about now that his kingdom has been superimposed on the kingdoms of his world.

If we are sceptical of this, if it sounds too slick for us, then we should immerse ourselves in Christian biography. (Reading the biographies of Christ’s people remains my favourite form of leisure activity; and more than “leisure”, since I have found there to be no comparable spiritual tonic.) As we steep ourselves in Christian biography we find that it becomes a means of grace for us, a vehicle that carries us away from ourselves and into the service of God. There we find ourselves losing ourselves for the kingdom of God , and discovering that in “losing” ourselves we are never lost to God. Instead, we know indubitably now that we’ve been found of God and are cherished by him and will be satisfied in him for as long as breath remains in us. In short, we shall have verified our Lord’s promise: “Whoever keeps her life will lose it, and whoever loses her life for my sake will find it.”

Jesus came not to bring peace, he tells us, but a sword, division, strife, trouble and turbulence. He means that the disruption he causes is surgery necessary to re-set what’s fractured, put right what’s dislocated, cleanse what’s infected. In short, the pain he causes is curative in that it’s the beginning of the shalom of God. Even though he brings a sword; even as he brings a sword and causes division, he is and remains first and finally the bringer of peace, for he is the prince of peace, and was given us to bring peace to the earth.

To be possessed of this conviction is to give ourselves up to him, and in doing this discover that we have found life.

                                                                                                 Victor Shepherd                

 January 2003

Luke 14:25-33     Ecclesiastes 3:1-8     1^st John 4:7-12     

[1] Directing a youngster to the bible is always risky. Who knows what the young person will turn up? Several years ago, when our daughter Mary – now twenty-seven – was six or seven years old, she was restless prior to the CGIT Advent Vesper Service. She persisted in querying Maureen about the facts of life. Not prudish in the least Maureen nonetheless felt that five minutes before the vesper service in a hushed church wasn’t the time or place to launch into “the great explanation”. Since Mary had just learned to read Maureen thought that reading would be the surest way to distract Mary. “Read the bible”, said Maureen as she pulled it out of the pew rack, “Open it anywhere and read”. Mary did as she was told. With loud voice she read, “And the Lord opened Sarah’s womb”. (“wam-b”) Then, with louder voice, “Mommy, what’s a womb?” “Shhh! Just read the bible!” “But I am reading the bible. What’s a womb?”

Directing a youngster to scripture is always risky. When I was a child I was told repeatedly that God is love. Jesus, the Son of God, loves too. Christian people are to love. Hatred of any kind is bad, I concluded; hatred is always and everywhere wrong. I was directed to scripture as a confirmation of all of this.

Opening up the book of Ecclesiastes (3:8) I read that while there is a time to love there is also a time to hate. In no time I was telling my parents at the breakfast table that according to scripture God hates; God is a terrific hater. Furthermore, Jesus says that we are even to hate our parents, as well as spouse and children. But I had always been told that I was to honour my parents; now the master himself was telling me I was to hate them if I was to be his disciple. In any case I persisted with my reading and struggled on. Not only were disciples to hate; not only was I to hate; I was going to be hated as well! I read our Lord’s declaration that his people will be hated. What was I getting myself into? But perhaps the cloud had a silver lining since Jesus promised that to the extent his people were hated they would also find themselves blessed! At the same time I was more confused than enlightened by what I was reading. To my confusion there was soon added mystery, for in reading the book of Revelation (which has since become one of my favourites) I was told that the beast would come to hate the whore. (Rev. 17:16) Beast? Whore? I was only thirteen and I had never met either! But in any case the beast and the whore might as well hate each other since, according to scripture, everyone already hates everyone else.

[2] Yes. That’s just the point: everyone does. Hatred is endemic in a fallen creation. Hatred comes naturally to fallen people. After all a fallen world is fallen away from the God who is love. To fall away from love can only be to fall into hate, haters of God and haters of one another, as scripture reminds us on every page.

Worldlings with the shallowest understanding never grasp the nature and depth and scope of the fall. They think that love predominates in a world which they don’t believe fallen. Worldlings with a more sober, more realistic understanding assume that humankind is spiritually/morally neutral: humankind is suspended halfway between good and evil, love and hate, and is waiting only to be nudged in one direction or the other.

On the other hand, Christians with the profoundest gospel-understanding know that humankind is created good, is currently fallen, and as such has that heart-condition of which scripture speaks. We have a heart-condition so bad that our heart can’t be fixed; nothing less than a transplant will do, a new heart, new mind, new spirit.

Do I exaggerate? Think for a minute of what scripture says about the anguish of loving. Scripture doesn’t tell us to “love one another” as if it were as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, as though the exhortation were really quite superfluous. Instead scripture states that a massive work of grace is needed, so massive, so thoroughgoing that this work leaves its beneficiaries speaking not of improvement but of death of old man/woman and birth of new. Then scripture festoons itself with a thousand-and-one injunctions to love, plainly teaching that even those made new at Christ’s hand have to be prodded and reminded and urged and rebuked and coaxed and pleaded with over and over lest the “old” proclivity to hate reassert itself. All the resources of Father, Son, Holy Spirit and congregation are needed to keep so much as one soul loving ever so slightly.

I am amused whenever I hear newscasters say, “War has broken out…”. The newscaster assumes that peace is the natural condition of a fallen world and war irrupts uncharacteristically from time to time. Surely the opposite is the case: war is the natural condition of a fallen world and peace irrupts uncharacteristically from time to time. Let’s not forget that since World War II (which set a record for fatalities) there have been over fifty wars whose fatality-total is greater than that of World War II. Think of the hatred that has soaked into the soil around this community. First there was strife between native and white intruder, then between English-speaking and French-speaking, then between American and British, then between descendants of both British and French here and Germans overseas. Now we have returned everywhere in Canada to strife between native and everyone else. And of course hatred expressed through an unwieldy army has largely given way to hatred expressed through the terrorist whose ten ounces of plastic can rend flesh and steel in ways that Napoleon, Bismarck and Wellington never imagined.

Because open warfare hasn’t occurred in our vicinity for many years we lose sight of the fact that preparedness for war — essential, it would appear — merely confirms that smouldering hostility endemic in a fallen world. For decades the policy of Great Britain was to ensure that its navy was larger than the combined firepower of the next two largest navies who might decide to gang up on Britain. As late as 1932 the United States had on file strategies to be deployed in the event of war with Britain. Now that the cold war is over and the former USSR neither needs nor can afford its huge nuclear submarine fleets, its nuclear submarines will be sold to developing nations who have waited years to acquire crushing firepower. When Rene Levesque came to power in 1976 the CIA of the United States slipped hundreds of French-speaking agents into Quebec in case the PQ government turned nationalistically nasty and tampered with American access to the St. Lawrence Seaway, fresh water, or hydroelectricity. In 1985 the U.S. government began concentrating one entire division of light infantry (10,000 men) in New York State opposite Kingston. These 10,000 men, two hours from Ottawa and three hours from Montreal, are available for military intervention if political instability in Canada ever threatens U.S. interests.

What about the beast and the whore? In the book of Revelation the beast is the symbol of the political power of imperial Rome; the whore is the symbol of affluent decadence. People want greater and greater affluence, regardless of the decadence that comes with it. They expect political authority (the government) to facilitate this for them. As economic recession sets in, however, (it always does cyclically) government insists that it cannot continue to exercise its responsibility to preserve order as well as continue to provide countless “goodies”. At this point there is open conflict between those wanting law and order and those wanting access to unbridled luxury. The beast has come to hate the whore.

Hatred isn’t an occasional outcropping from humankind; it’s endemic within humankind.

[3] This truth is all the more startling when seen in the light of the God who is love. (1 John 4:8) God doesn’t love in the sense that love is what he does (as though he could do something else; namely, not love if he wanted to); God loves, ceaselessly, just because God’s nature is to love. To say that God’s nature is to love is to say that God cannot not love. God will not fail to love just because he cannot fail to love. Love and love only is all that he is.

I am aware that all creaturely pictures for God are somewhat dangerous since God isn’t creaturely. Still, we have to picture him somehow. Whenever I think of God and his ceaselessly fiery love I think of the sun. Now the sun consists of gas. Yet the gas which constitutes the sun isn’t wispy gas; it’s nothing vague or ethereal. The gas which constitutes the sun (hydrogen, largely) is startlingly dense, weighty. So dense is this gas that one litre of it weighs 100 pounds. Think of it: density denser than lead, vastness vaster than the oceans, always burning, burning, burning, giving forth warmth and light and life. Then think of God: concrete beyond our imagining, eternally burning with love, ceaselessly giving forth love, forever bringing forth warmth and light and life. God has suffused his creation with love. He continues to irradiate his creation with that alone with which he can irradiate it — love — just because love is all he is. God isn’t love plus something else. Neither is God something else plus love. God is flaming love and only flaming love concentrated more densely than the sun is concentrated fiery hydrogen gas.

[4] And yet — and this is what astonished me when I was a youngster — God hates! The God whose nature is unmixed love, pure love — how can pure love hate? If pure love is said to hate then such “hatred” can only be an expression of this love.

Let’s be sure we grasp a crucial distinction: the hatred which seethes in a fallen world is not an expression of love. The hatred which infests a fallen world is murderous, as Jesus makes clear when he insists that such hatred is murder looking for a place to happen. God’s “hatred”, however, is entirely different. The “hatred” with which God hates is but God’s love bent on correcting us. Since God loves without interruption, since God can’t do anything but love, his “hatred” can only be his love scorching us, for the moment, in order to correct us.

We should look more closely at what God is said to hate. God hates pagan worship, says the author of Deuteronomy.(12:31) One feature of pagan worship which God hated in the nations surrounding Israel was the practice of burning one’s children as a sacrifice to the pagan deity. Pagan worshippers believed that their pagan deity was pleased, placated even, by the infants they threw into the fire.

“Ancient stuff”, someone snorts, “primitive stuff; it has no bearing on us today”. I disagree. What deity is worshipped when parents by the thousand in Thailand send out twelve and thirteen year-olds, boys and girls, as prostitutes? What deity is worshipped when the Thai government refuses to enact legislation to curb this trade, so highly valued is the almighty tourist dollar it brings in? Children aren’t sacrificed to pagan deities today? Surely a child is sacrificed to a pagan god when the little boy is told from infancy that he must become an NHL player, and everything in the family is given over to this all-consuming preoccupation.

Let’s move from Deuteronomy to the prophet Hosea. Hosea (9:10) insists that people invariably become conformed to what they worship. Whatever we worship puts its stamp upon us. To worship the God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is to be stamped afresh with that image which was stamped upon us at creation. To worship something else is to be stamped with this “something”, only to find that this stamp and the original stamp of God’s image are now frightfully mixed up and confused, betokening confusion within the person herself.

But God hates more than pagan worship. God hates the worship of Israel (church) when the outer exercises of worship aren’t met with inner sincerity of heart. Through the prophet Isaiah God says, “This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me”. If our heart is cold toward God’s love and truth and way then our “worship” is an exercise in phoniness, a smokescreen meant to deceive. Concerning this cold and stonyhearted worship, as phoney as it is reprehensible, God says through the prophet Amos, “I hate, I despise your solemn assemblies”. (Amos 5:21)

God hates even more. God is said to hate evil, hate wickedness, in any form.

And yet the God whose heart is flaming love can only love. Then his manifold hatred can only be his scorching love correcting and refining his creatures. God hates alien worship just because he wants something more glorious for men and women than they can imagine for themselves, and they never will imagine it and know it until they fall on their face before him. God hates the worship of Israel and church when it is devoid of spirit and truth just because he longs to see sincerity and integrity in his people. God hates evil, wickedness, just because he longs to see righteousness flood his creation.

[5] By now I was a young teenager. I understood the sense in which we must never hate, for the kind of hatred with which we must never hate is a sign of that era which God has condemned, and our hating with this kind of hatred could only mean that we are still in bondage to the old era. We are never to hate our enemies, for to hate our enemies would declare publicly that we were in bondage to a fallen world. I understood too the sense in which the Christian must always hate, for we are always to hate precisely what God hates. Not only are we to hate only what God hates, we are to hate only as God hates; we are to agonize with God for a world and its people whom he never fails to love.

Suddenly I understood the sense in which God’s people are to hate the company of evildoers (Psalm 26:5), hate the doubleminded (Psalm 119:113), hate perverted speech (Proverbs 8:13).

[6] It was a few years later (by now I was almost out of my teens) that I came to understand another sense in which the Hebrew mind uses the word “hate”. (What follows in this last section of the sermon is very different from the discussion of hatred which has preceded. It’s almost as if we’re beginning a new sermon.) Hebrew grammar doesn’t have a comparative form or superlative form of adjectives and adverbs. In English we say, “Apple pie is good; apple pie with ice-cream is better”. Lacking a comparative Hebrew says, “Apple pie with ice-cream is good; apple pie without ice-cream is terrible”. Now when we come to express the idea that we ought to love God more than we love anything or anyone else, that our love for God ought to be greater than our love given elsewhere, Hebrew says we ought to love the one and hate the other. Because Jesus is Hebrew, thoroughly Hebrew, he says that to become his disciple we must hate parents, spouse and children. (Luke 14:26) He means that compared to him all earthly ties come second. However important our bond with other people, none is as important as our bond with him. To be sure, the command to honour one’s parents is never relaxed. At the same time we must not give to our parents — nor to our spouse or children or anyone else — what is owed God alone. Our first love is to be the God who is nothing but love. As long as our first love is the God who is love then we shall love all others — spouse, parents, children — with a love which is appropriate to the relationship. But if we give them that love which is owed God, then we shall corrupt even that love with which we are attempting to love them. Therefore we must “hate” them in the sense which Hebrew grammar confers on “hate” in this context. We must hate them — that is, love them with a love which is strictly subordinated to our love for God — especially if they demand that we love them with that love which is owed him.

It’s always risky to send a youngster to the bible. It’s also the best thing we can do. Before I was out of my teens I had learned much about hatred. One, that hatred in the bad sense of the word is endemic in a fallen world; two, that the God who is eternal love hates in the sense that his hatred is his love scorching us right; three, that God’s people are never to hate in the sense of possessing murderous intent, but always to hate in the sense of repudiating what God repudiates; lastly, and quite different from the foregoing, we are to “hate” (in the Hebrew sense) even what is good for the sake of what is best; namely, our great God and Saviour.

Victor Shepherd     

December 2002

Luke 14:25-33     Luke 17:7-10     Mathew 13:44-46

I: — (Luke 14:25 -33) When The Great War broke out in 1914 the Canadian government began appealing for young men. They were needed as soldiers. Hundreds of thousands responded. Motivation for joining up varied. Some young men volunteered because they wanted to beat back the conflagration engulfing Europe . Others volunteered inasmuch as soldiering appealed to their sense of adventure.  Some signed up in that they would have been ashamed to remain at home when friends and neighbours and colleagues were enlisting.

When Jesus sounded his call to discipleship women and men responded for all the reasons we’ve just mentioned.           Some wanted to be part of God’s campaign to beat back, ultimately defeat, that evil one who was destroying human bodies and minds and spirits. Others, less profound, wanted adventure. And some were shamed into offering themselves when they saw friends and relatives signing on with the Master.

There was, however, one crucial difference between the Canadian government’s recruiting of soldiers and our Lord’s recruiting of disciples: the Canadian government never attempted to impress upon its recruits what the cost of soldiering might be. Nowhere on the recruit poster could one find the sentence, even as a footnote, “Warning: soldiering may be dangerous to your health.”  Nowhere could one find a magazine or newspaper advertisement depicting a legless soldier or a decapitated airman with the caption: “This may be your end too.” No government has ever announced the hardship, pain, mud and blood that’s inevitably part of war-time service.

Jesus, on the other hand, always warned his recruits. “If all you want is adventure”, he cautioned, “there’s less painful adventure to be had elsewhere, elsehow. If you take up following me unthinkingly, you won’t last two weeks.”         As a matter of fact, Jesus everywhere insisted that discipleship entailed crossbearing, and crossbearing, metaphorically speaking, could turn into crossbearing literally at any moment.  Jesus never covered up the cost involved in identifying oneself with him.

Luke reports that a fellow runs up to the Master and gushes sentimentally “Lord, I’ll follow you wherever you go.” Jesus eyes him without blinking and responds, “Foxes and birds have the comfort and security of den and nest; but I don’t have even that.  And neither will you. You go home and think it over.”

To drive his point home Jesus tells two parables about the cost of discipleship.  A man begins a building project, gets halfway through it, runs out of money, and has to leave it – to his embarrassment.  A king commits his army to battle, finds he’s bitten off more than he can chew, and has to slink home shamefully.  The point of both parables is this: before we jump and shout “Of course we’re going to be disciples”, we should sit down and soberly count the cost of the endeavour.

I’d never say that the cost of discipleship is the defining characteristic of discipleship.  It isn’t the defining aspect; still, it is one aspect. And it’s an aspect concerning which the North American church is silent.

If you listen to religious TV broadcasting you hear one success story after another.  Someone became straightened out with God Almighty and thereafter his income tripled; his daughter became the beauty queen; his son was made CEO of the multi-national corporation.  According to the religious media, being a disciple is synonymous with being a winner.

I find this notion odd, since Jesus is 100% loser. He’s a Jew; that is, he belongs to that people the world execrates.         His closest followers desert him.  His mother doesn’t understand him.  His brothers don’t believe in him.  The crowds who fawn over him one day forget him the next.  He’s despised by religious authorities and condemned by political authorities. He’s slandered, then put to death between two criminals at the city garbage dump. And of course he dies forsaken by his Father. When he’s raised from the dead, he’s raised wounded (as the apostle John reminds us.)         Ascended, seated at the right hand of the Father (i.e., declared the ruler of the entire creation), he suffers still (as the Newer Testament reminds us repeatedly.)

How costly discipleship is for you and me depends, of course, on how closely we follow our Lord (or endeavour to follow him.) The greater our love for him and our loyalty to him; the less of a gap there is between him and us; the more clearly we are identified with him – it all means the greater the cost of discipleship.

When I was a youngster my parents didn’t own an automobile. We went to church every Sunday (morning and evening), and to Sunday School in the afternoon. (Both my parents taught Sunday School.) We had to take three streetcars, had to make two transfers in each direction, always waiting, waiting, waiting on account of the less frequent Sunday transit service. When I think of it now I’m staggered at the inconvenience my parents endured and the money they spent on streetcar fares.  Why did they do it? Because Jesus Christ meant so very much to them that no cost borne for his sake could ever be too much.

Discipleship exacts a price.  Occasionally the price is paid dramatically, including the ultimate drama of martyrdom. Far more often the price is paid quietly.  Consider:

-we are going to uphold truthfulness when most of the people around us will lie for any reason at all and couldn’t care less in any case when their phoniness is exposed.

-we aren’t going to permit our fourteen year-old daughter to go camping with her boyfriend.

-we are going to continue speaking up on behalf of all whom our society deems expendable – the intellectually challenged, the mentally ill, the poor, even the voiceless, defenceless unborn – and continue to speak up on behalf of these people just because the image of God that they bear; this is the measure of their significance, not their economic uselessness.

Anyone who is unthinkingly quick to respond to our Lord’s invitation he cautions with two parables whose message is, “Add it up carefully. The cost is real. Don’t begin with a huge fanfare and then have to quit shamefully.  Add it up.”

II: — (Matthew 13:44 -46) At the same time, I should never care to give the impression that life in the company of Jesus Christ is unrelenting weariness and ceaseless sacrifice. On the contrary, life in the company of the king is rich.         How rich? How precious? In two little parables Jesus tells us of a man who comes upon a pearl, a pearl so beautiful he can’t imagine anything more beautiful.  He simply has to have it and will give up anything for it.  And our Lord tells us of a man who knows that in an ordinary field there’s been buried the most extraordinary treasure, and he has to have it. He’ll give up anything for it.

In Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus the apostle speaks of “the unsearchable riches of Christ.”   The Greek word he uses for “unsearchable” means bottomless, unfathomable, immeasurable. As often as we attempt to speak of what living in the company of Jesus Christ means to us – its richness, its delight, its attractiveness, its incomparable worth – we can’t speak adequately of this at all.  We can’t define it; we can’t properly describe it; we speak of it only haltingly just because no language does justice to it.  When Joy Davidman, wife of C.S., Lewis moved from Marxist atheism into the splendour of the king’s court and kingdom, a newspaperman, pen and pad poised, asked her to describe it.  She stared at the journalist for the longest time and then whispered, “How do you gather the ocean into a teacup?”

The commonest biblical metaphor for faith (also the profoundest) is marriage.  Marriage is used to speak of the reality of faith, the reality of keeping company with Jesus, just because marriage is an everyday, common occurrence (and therefore suitable for use as a metaphor) that is at the same time the most mysterious and most delightful human occurrence.  When the book of Proverbs speaks of “the way of a man with a maid” as a wonder too wonderful to describe, the book of Proverbs is correct. Isn’t the attempt at speaking about the spouse who is dearer to us than all else; isn’t such an attempt one more instance of trying to gather the ocean into a teacup?

For reasons we shan’t go into this morning all the denominational groupings in the Christian “family” began – and still begin – with a handful of men and women possessed of throbbing intimacy with the living Lord Jesus Christ.         As this lit-up movement broadens, as it draws more and more people into itself, head and heart become separated.         After two generations the movement has become a denomination.  Denominations are identified by the head; that is, by how they think. Lost by now is the initial rapture of the heart. Lost by now is that first love that first filled the first people in the movement. Lost is the wonder, the winsomeness, the attractiveness, the beauty of living day-by-day in an intimacy with our Lord that seemed only to be able to become more intimate.

Seemed only to be able to become more intimate, because in fact it didn’t become more intimate; it became one-sidedly cerebral, one-sidedly “headish”, cold, sterile, inert. Imagine someone coming upon a pearl like the pearl of which our Lord speaks.  She looks at it for several minutes and then says “Do you know that pearls are formed when smelly oysters, ugly to look at too, secrete a chemical that hardens and hardens until a grey-ish precipitate is formed?” Everything she’s said is correct. And she says it only because she is pathetically blind to the beauty of pearls, never mind blind to that pearl which our Lord says is worth everything.

You must have noticed that when the biblical writers come to speak of the attractivness of the king and his realm; when they speak of its appeal, its winsomeness, its comeliness, its irresistibility, they speak in the most vivid images.         “There was the river of life, bright as crystal”, says the seer in the book of Revelation.  “We have beheld his glory” cries the apostle John concerning his fellow-Christians. (Glory is God’s innermost splendour turned outwards and visited upon us.)         “No one has ever seen; no one has ever heard; no one can even imagine all that God has prepared for those who love him” announces Paul to the congregation in Corinth.

Paul speaks of “the unfathomable riches of Christ.” Jesus speaks of a pearl, of treasure, precious beyond telling, shining more attractively than the sun in its inimitable splendour.  This is what it’s like to live with me, says Jesus.         And it’s pure gift.

III: — (Luke 17:7-10) Needless to say, every gift has its task; every privilege has its responsibility; every boon has its obligation. Intimacy with Christ the king, glorious to be sure, entails service rendered to the king. In what spirit is such service to be rendered? With what attitude do we obey our Lord?

In answering this question Jesus utters the parable of the diligent servant. The parable is addressed to those among us (all of us, actually) who are tempted to have a “merit” mentality, tempted to think that our service to the king should call forth his recognition, his congratulation, even modest remuneration.  There’s always a corner of the sinful human heart wherein it’s thought that discipleship resembles a business contract: for service rendered our Lord, especially service rendered in difficult circumstances, you and I are entitled to our fee.  In his parable of the diligent servant Jesus insists that at the end of all we’ve done in service to our Master, we can say only “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done.” (NRSV)

“Worthless slaves”: perhaps we bristle when we hear this, and object for two reasons.  The first objection: it makes our Lord sound thoughtless, uncaring, dictatorial to the point of cruelty.  The second objection: it appears to contradict everything he says elsewhere about the rewards of the kingdom.

We can dismiss any suggestion that Jesus Christ is uncaring. He loves you and me more than he loves himself.         The cross demonstrates this.  Is he dictatorial at all, never mind dictatorial to the point of cruelty? So far from being dictatorial, he allows himself to be abused by anyone at all, finally absorbing the abuse of the cross where he prays for his assassins.  There’s nothing of the tyrant about him.

“When you have done all that you were ordered to do, say ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done.’” The second objection: does this contradict what Jesus says elsewhere about the rewards of the kingdom – for instance, “When you are helping others financially, do it secretly, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Everyone knows that whoever gives a cup of cold water is rewarded, according to Jesus.

The point is, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done” doesn’t overturn the rewards of the kingdom, but it does overturn a reward-mentality; it does overturn the self-serving calculation of a meritocracy; it does overturn a tit-for-tat arrangement wherein we say to God, “I’ve done thus and so for you; now what are going to do for me?”

We must always understand that God owes us nothing, yet God has promised us everything: the king and his kingdom.  The reward that attends our obedience is simply kingdom-blessing intensified; kingdom-joy deepened; kingdom-contentment rendered ever more satisfying. The reward that God doesn’t promise us is promotion at work, a bigger bank account, a faster social climb up the social Everest.

When Jesus speaks of reward, the reward is always logically connected to the obedience it rewards. It’s never the case that the reward is logically unrelated to the obedience it rewards. Think of it this way. I’ve been married for 36 years. Let’s suppose that tomorrow I say to my wife, “I’ve been faithful to you for 36 years, having fended off opportunities for adultery without number as pastor and professor. Now what do I get for my faithfulness? What’s my prize for good behaviour? Do I get a new bicycle? A trip to the Grey Cup game?” Plainly bicycle and Grey Cup game are logically unrelated to marital fidelity.  What’s more, my childish speech to my wife, “I’ve been a good boy for 36 years…” is as silly as it is puerile.

On the other hand marital faithfulness is rewarded: the reward is a richer marriage.  The reward is greater blessings, greater joy, greater contentment. This reward is related to the obedience it rewards, and this reward has nothing to do with a reward-mentality.

As a pastor I have found many people who think that they do have a claim on God; unconsciously they have lived in a meritocracy for decades.  Why, they have spent 40 years “doing the right thing”, as they put it. And now difficulty has overtaken them; reversal, perhaps tragedy; perhaps even premature death. They feel God has “welched” on his promise of reward.

But his reward has never been success or affluence or long life. His reward is the profoundest satisfaction in Christ, with the assurance of greater satisfaction eternally. Anyone who says “But what more do I get” hasn’t yet understood that intimacy with Jesus Christ is already everything.

In the two previous sermons on the parables of the kingdom I have indicated the logical connection among the parables discussed in the sermon.  Today, however, there’s no logical connection among the three groups of parables. Instead we are given three descriptions of the person who lives in the kingdom, three aspects of kingdom-existence, three dimensions of discipleship.

The three?

There is a cost to be considered.

There is a richness that outweighs, incomparably outweighs, any cost whatever.

There is a service to be rendered uncomplainingly.

                                                                                              Victor Shepherd

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            May 2006

                                                                                                  Luke 14:28-32

Whenever war breaks out governments appeal for volunteers; sovereigns urge recruits to offer themselves for the conflict that is already lapping the lives of everyone. Thousands of people do volunteer. They offer themselves for a variety of reasons. Some perceive the nature of the threat that the conflict poses and want to lend themselves in beating it back. Others, much less perceptive, volunteer themselves inasmuch as soldiering appeals to their sense of adventure; civilian life seems drab compared to the excitement of combat. Others still, lacking both perception and an adventurous spirit, are shamed into offering themselves: to stay at home and shirk the conflict would be shameful.

When Jesus summoned men and women to discipleship they responded for all the reasons we have just mentioned. Some perceived the nature of the spiritual conflict, knowing with St.Paul that the conflict isn’t with flesh and blood but with principalities, powers and “rulers of this present darkness.” Others merely wanted adventure, and Jesus was the most recent fellow to summon adventurers. Others still were shamed into volunteering.

There is, however, one crucial difference between the recruiting for soldiers that governments do in time of war and the summoning of disciples that Jesus did in the face of cosmic conflict: governments never impress upon recruits what the cost of soldiering might be. There is never a footnote on the recruitment-poster, “Soldiering may be dangerous to your health.” When General Eisenhower was coordinating the allied forces for their assault on D-Day American senior officers complained persistently that American soldiers were underprepared; American soldiers had undergone training exercises that had nothing like the rigour and hardship and fright and miserable weather of combat conditions. Eisenhower, a fine soldier himself, nodded sympathetically with his senior officers even as he reminded them that families and politicians back in the United States would not stand for having their young men undergo training that was rigorous enough to be realistic. The result was, of course, that the soft training mandated by politicians and stateside families issued in combat casualties that were far higher than they should have been.

Our Lord was different. “If all you want is adventure”, he warned would-be followers, “you might as well keep on fishing. Fishing will give you as much adventure as you need.” “If you are joining up because you are ashamed not to, don’t bother to join up, because in two weeks the hardship of discipleship will vastly outweigh any shame still clinging to you. Stay home!”

Luke tells us that a fellow runs up to the Master and gushes sentimentally, “I’ll follow you wherever you go.” Jesus stares him back and retorts, “Foxes and birds have the comfort of hole and nest; but I don’t have even that, and neither will you. Go home and think some more about discipleship.”

To drive his point home Jesus tells two parables about the cost of discipleship. A man begins a building project, gets halfway through it, runs out of money, and has to abandon it. A king commits his army to battle, finds he has bitten off more than he can chew, and has to give up. The point of the parables is this: before we jump up and shout with premature enthusiasm, “I want to be a disciple too!”, we should sit down soberly and assess the cost of this endeavour.

Few notions are more false, even more blasphemous, than the so-called “prosperity gospel” now rampant in North America. Believing in Jesus, we are told, will double our income, or have us elected the beauty queen, or find us president of the club or the company. Jesus makes his people winners!

Odd, isn’t it, since Jesus himself, from a human perspective, is pure loser. He’s a Jew — someone the world loves to hate. His family misunderstands him and is even embarrassed by his supposed insanity. His closest friends desert him. He is executed alongside criminals, and the site of the execution is the city garbage dump. He tells his followers that they can expect as much themselves.

Discipleship is costly in any era. Recently I learned of a young man who was selected for a management training program in a major Canadian corporation. Very quickly he learned that the other management trainees expected him to accompany them in their after-hours drinking escapades. He told them he didn’t want to do this every evening. They invited him to their favourite strip-tease show. He told them he preferred to go home to his wife. Next thing he knew, a nasty rumour had been circulated about him: perhaps his sexual orientation was unusual. Next thing he knew after that, he was no longer in the management training program.

It’s always been necessary to count the cost of discipleship. In 16th century France those Protestants who escaped the sword were subjected thereafter to the severest social penalties. In the 17th century the suffering forced on the Puritans beggars description. In the 18th century the Christians who opposed slavery were vilified as saboteurs of the economy. And the plight of Christians anywhere in communist-controlled lands throughout the 20th century? Ask my daughter Catherine in Hong Kong who reviews book after book about what really happened in China from 1948 through the Cultural Revolution.

There is another sense too in which the cost of discipleship has to be assessed. I speak now of the painful frankness with which we must search our hearts in the light of the gospel. There is a sense (albeit superficial) in which ignorance is bliss. For the longer I remain in the company of Jesus Christ the more horrified I am as he acquaints me with the treachery of my own heart. Many people, I am told, look upon me as quite transparent; I seem to have acquired the reputation of wearing very few disguises. I don’t know how I acquired such a reputation, since there is no truth to it. However infrequently I may deceive you I am coming to learn how frequently I have deceived myself. My capacity for self-deception; my capacity for rationalizing my sin before it is committed and excusing it after it is committed; my capacity for subtle personal dishonesty; this, I have come to see so very painfully, is limitless! My capacity to legitimate (to myself, at least) resentments and ill-temper and impatience and contempt and a vehemence amounting to violence; there’s no bottom to it! Had I never become a disciple I could have remained blissfully unaware of it and therefore as happy as a pig in mud — couldn’t I have? Now that my proximity to Jesus has made aware of my treacherous heart I can’t pretend I don’t know, and I’m going to have to do something about it.

Jesus urges us to become disciples. Yet when he sees our naive eagerness he cautions us, in the two parables we read a minute ago, “Add it all up carefully. The cost is real.”

Matthew 13:44-46

If our Lord had left the impression that life in the kingdom of God, life in the company of Christ the king himself, were unrelieved gloom or endless sacrifice or ceaseless weariness or anything else relentlessly negative, then no one would ever become a disciple. Our Lord in fact left no such impression. The parables we have just read tell us the opposite: to acknowledge the king’s rightful rule, to hear and heed his summons, to join him in his venture through that world which is his by right and his again by his self-giving for it — this is rich.

How rich? How valuable? How precious? In his two little stories Jesus tells us of a man who comes upon a pearl so beautiful that he just has to have it; he tells us of a man who learns there is invaluable treasure buried in a most ordinary-looking field — and he just has to have it. In other words, the worth, the delight, the joy, the satisfaction of kingdom-venture in the company of the king himself cannot be fathomed.

In his letter to the congregation in Ephesus Paul speaks of the “unsearchable riches of Christ.” The word he uses for “unsearchable” (ANEXICHNIASTON) literally means “bottomless, unfathomable, unprobable, inexhaustible”. Probe them, test them, appropriate them as much as we will, their value and attractiveness and significance we cannot measure, exhaust, or even adequately describe. Before these riches we can only stammer. Yet even the most tongue-tied among us can still know them and relish them and delight in them.

The commonest biblical metaphor for faith, for living in an ongoing encounter with our Lord himself; the commonest biblical metaphor is marriage. One reason that the metaphor of marriage is used so very often for discipleship is that words fall abysmally short in all attempts at describing both. How can we describe the foundational fusion and concomitant thrill and wonder of marriage? Only in the most halting, sill-sounding, self-conscious manner. How can we speak of the profundity and mystery and splendour of making love (where it is love that is genuinely made)? We can’t. We can only fumble and falter and trust that that to which we point and which we recommend others will come to know through living it — otherwise, we are certain, they will never come to know it at all.

Joy Davidman, wife of C.S. Lewis; Joy Davidman was raised in New York City in the home of thoroughgoing secularists. More than mere secularists, her parents were also militant Marxist-atheists. When Joy Davidman came to faith in Jesus Christ she grasped instantly what Jesus had meant in the parables of the beautiful pearl and the treasure hid in a field. Years later a journalist asked her to describe what the total Christian enterprise was really like. She looked at him for a minute and replied slowly, “How do you gather the ocean into a teacup?”

We must be sure to notice that Jesus doesn’t attempt to speak factually, literally, when he speaks of the kingdom; he speaks metaphorically, imagistically, pictorially. He does so just because the ocean can’t be gathered into a teacup; just because a factual description can’t come close to something before which even the most vivid imagination is inadequate. We 20th century types tend to lose sight of how much of the bible isn’t written in factual prose but rather in imagistic poetry. When the visionary writer of the book of Revelation is overwhelmed yet again at the vividness and intensity and density of his life in God he cries, “…and there was the river of life, bright as crystal!” Ezekiel shouts, “I saw a valley of dead dry bones, and when the Word of God was declared they lived and danced and exulted.” John says “we severed, sapless branches; we have been grafted onto the tree; and now the root-deep sap that brings life and leaf and fruit to the tree courses through us as well.” Jesus says, “To know me is to be like a woman who has just given birth; her joy at her newborn is so intense, so wonderful, that it squeezes out everything else; she forgets what is behind her, doesn’t worry about what is in front of her, and simply glows at the marvel and mystery of all that has made her radiant.”

The point of poetry isn’t to inform us (the way assembly-instructions or operating-instructions inform us concerning the household appliance we have newly purchased); the point of poetry, rather, is to bring us to stand where the poet herself stands and perceive what she perceives and experience what she experiences. In other words, poetry is written just because no prose is adequate for the intensity and vividness and marvel and mystery and ecstasy of what the poet herself has lived.

Paul speaks of the “unsearchable riches of Christ”. Jesus himself speaks of a pearl beautiful beyond words and a treasure valuable beyond calculation.

Luke 17:7-10

Every gift brings with it its peculiar task; every privilege entails a responsibility; every favour confers its obligation. To know ourselves beneficiaries of the king’s favour is to know ourselves claimed for the king’s service. Since this is not in doubt, there remains but one matter to be settled: in what spirit or mood or attitude is service to the king to be rendered? By way of answering this question Jesus utters his parable of the farm-owner and the worker. The parable is addressed to those who are tempted to have a “merit mentality”, to those who think their service to the king should call forth his recognition, his congratulation, even a measure of remuneration. There is always the temptation (and therefore the tendency) to regard our life in Christ’s kingdom as a business contract: for service rendered to him you and are I entitled to — we are entitled to something, aren’t we? We aren’t. Our Lord insists that at the end of each of those days that we spend in service to him we can only say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.”

We may bristle when we hear this, for it makes our Lord sound as if he were a slave-owner; it makes him sound as if he were entitled to assign us or even dispose of us in a manner made infamous by the cruellest tyrants our century has seen. Furthermore, it appears to contradict all that he says elsewhere about rewards. After all, he does say repeatedly that there is reward for those who faithfully obey him and diligently serve him.

In view of the fact that our Lord has gone to hell and back for us in the cross, we can set aside any notion of arbitrary, heartless tyranny.

Then what about reward? When Jesus speaks of reward he is not promising payment for services rendered. When payment is granted for services rendered the payment has no intrinsic connexion with the services. Joe Carter hits home runs for the Blue Jays and receives a million dollars per year. The money paid has no intrinsic connexion with the home runs hit. The beauty queen is given a new car. The car has no intrinsic connexion with the woman’s physical appearance. When our Lord speaks of “reward” he doesn’t have anything like this in mind. When Jesus speaks of “reward”, rather, he means an outcome that is intrinsically related to what has been pursued.

The reward we receive from God for faithful service in his kingdom is never wealth, reputation, prestige, or power. The reward we receive for kingdom-service is greater opportunity for kingdom-service. The reward we receive for being faithful in little is find ourselves entrusted with much.

Surely this is easy to understand in everyday matters. The reward for faithfulness in marriage isn’t a new house (there being no intrinsic connexion between marital faithfulness and new house); the reward for faithfulness in marriage is greater marital intimacy. The real reward for diligence in studying French isn’t a new wardrobe for getting a mark of 93; the real reward for diligence in studying French is the ability to read French literature and thence to gain access to those worlds that any literature opens up to us.

The reward of service rendered to the king is greater conformity to the nature of the king himself, and greater opportunity for yet greater service. Such reward is real. Our Lord will bestow the reward that he has promised.

Yet even as he has promised it and we shall surely receive it, we do not merit it. At the end of the day, when we review the service we rendered to our Lord that day, we must admit that however faithful it may have been, in fact it wasn’t very faithful at all. Therefore we can but say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.” Yet even as we say this we know, so gracious is God, that even our semi-faithful service is going to be rewarded gloriously.

It is a sign of spiritual immaturity — or even a sign of out-and-out unbelief — to shout, “But I’ve worked so hard for him. Don’t I get something more?” What more can there be than increased intimacy with the king himself? What more can there be than being entrusted with greater matters? What more can there be than access to him whose riches are unsearchable?

And therefore those possessed of spiritual authenticity and maturity recognize the truth of the parable: we who have been favoured with the king and all the royal resources that the king shares with us, not to mention the rewards that the king’s loyal subjects are guaranteed — we must say of our service to him, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.”

Three aspects of the kingdom:

(i) there is a cost to be considered

(ii) outweighing any cost there is a richness,a delight, a joy, a treasure to be owned and cherished

(iii) in the wake of our rich blessings at the hand of the king himself there is a service to be rendered uncomplainingly, gladly, freely, for ever and ever.

                                                                   Victor A. Shepherd     

August 1996       

 Luke 15:11-32

[1] “You can always tell a man by the company he keeps.” Can you? Always? “Yes”, said the people with venomous hearts who watched Jesus, “You can always tell a man by the company he keeps.”

Jesus kept company with people whom many didn’t care for, such as lepers. Now in first-century Palestine lepers were viewed with horror and loathing. They had to announce themselves as they moved about, crying out, “Unclean! Unclean!”. In this way everyone could scamper out of their way and avoid contamination. When we read that Jesus consorted with lepers we must understand that he deliberately befriended those who were most vehemently despised and rejected. What he did here, of course, prefigured what he was to do for all of us on the cross.

There were others, also despised and rejected, whom our Lord befriended, such as the irreligious. The people who were indifferent to religious observance, even contemptuous of it, he went out of his way to find.

Also among the despised and rejected were the Gentiles. Jewish people customarily looked upon Gentiles as spiritually bereft and ethically benighted, utterly beyond the pale. Jesus welcomed them, commended them, irked Jewish listeners when he insisted that the Roman Centurion, for instance, a Gentile, exemplified greater faith than any Israelite he had met. Jesus welcomed all such people. He dignified them: the rejected, the poor, the irreligious, those who were regarded as inferior for any reason, those relegated to the fringes of the society.

Yet there was one thing Jesus didn’t do to them; he didn’t romanticize them. Because sentimentality outweighs mental acuity in so many of us, we romanticize these people; like the poor, for instance, especially at Christmas time, when Christmas sentiment speaks of them as “the humble poor.” Jesus never romanticized poverty. He knew that poverty is degrading and dehumanizing, evil. He never pretended that poverty invariably renders people humble; he knew it more often renders people bitter and apathetic.

We romanticize sickness. Last century Victorian novelists romanticized those with tuberculosis. Today we romanticize those with AIDS. Think of the spate of books holding up the AIDS sufferer as someone extraordinarily victimized and therefore the extraordinary incarnation of courage and fortitude and resilience. The mythology surrounding AIDS even suggests that AIDS sufferers are somehow a collective force for redeeming the world. So far from romanticizing sickness of any kind, Jesus looked upon sickness as something to be eradicated.

We romanticize criminality. Bonnie and Clyde. Al Capone. Billy the Kid. The Great Train Robbery. What was great about it? Surely the perpetrators are as detestable as the stocking-masked coward who shoves a pistol in the face of the Korean clerk in the corner store.

Jesus romanticized nothing: not poverty, not sickness, not criminality, certainly not sin or sinners. Nevertheless, he always welcomed sinners. He neither congratulated sin romantically nor condoned sin as inconsequential. At the same time, however, he always received sinners as the people for whom he had been sent.

Jesus approached all kinds of people. He pardoned them when their mess was their own fault; when their mess wasn’t their fault (the sick, the poor, the outcast) he gave them hope and energy even as he delivered them from bitterness. They loved him for it. Apart from him the attention they had customarily received was contempt followed by rejection. In his presence they thought better of themselves and could do better themselves just because their intimacy with him mysteriously lent them a transformation they couldn’t deny and others couldn’t duplicate.

Most profoundly, in meeting Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, they had met the one in whose company they had encountered the holy one of Israel himself. They now stepped forth on a joyful life in God, freed from the clutches and conventions of a society that had condemned them. They rejoiced in it and loved him for it.

They rejoiced; that is, the immediate beneficiaries of Christ’s embrace rejoiced. But not everyone rejoiced. Superior, disdainful people became nervous when they saw the freedom and high spirits and happiness of Jesus and his friends. They envied what they saw; they resented seeing in others what they lacked themselves; they objected that anyone else should have it at all. In no time they were accusing Jesus of befriending those whom respectable people know enough to ignore. The accusation stung. Jesus smarted under it. He responded to the accusation, “Do you object to what I’m doing? Do you resent my friends? Then let me tell you a story.” The parable of the two sons is our Lord’s defense of himself in the face of accusation.

[2] We often call the story “the parable of the prodigal son.”

(i) Home is dull beyond telling. Father is thought to have the personality of a dial-tone. Excitement is needed. “So give me now what’s going to be mine in any case when you die”, the younger son says to his father; “I need money for a good time. You might as well give it to me now as make me wait until you keel over and the coroner signs the certificate.” What the son thinks to be the soul of common sense in fact is a not-so-secret desire to have his dad dead; the young man is a murderer at heart while thinking himself to be virtuous. (We should note in passing that Martin Luther, with more than a little insight, insisted that unregenerate, impenitent men and women chafe under the claim and authority of God, and wish God dead. In other words, deicide lurks in every impenitent heart.)

(ii) The son sets out for the “far country”, so far out, compared to home, that it couldn’t be farther. There was a different woman every night (as the elder brother was soon to remind everyone); there was no lack of opportunity to fritter away a fortune. In the far country there were no restraints at all.

(iii) Money is soon used up, someone is now hungry and getting hungrier every day. He goes to the employment office and is assigned to work for — a Gentile! There was nothing more humiliating for a Jew than to have to work for a Gentile. There were many reasons for this, not the least of which was the conviction that Gentiles were ignorant pagans with the morals of an alley cat. An exaggeration? The apostle Paul didn’t think so. When he writes to the church in Ephesus he speaks of the Gentile world he knows, and speaks of it in a way that Jewish people would find no exaggeration at all. Says the apostle concerning the Gentiles of his era,

“Their wits are beclouded; they are strangers to the life that is in God, because ignorance prevails among them and their minds have grown hard as stone. Dead to all feeling, they have abandoned themselves to vice, and stop at nothing to satisfy their foul desires.” (Eph.4:17-19)

There wasn’t a Jew who wouldn’t agree with this description of the Gentile world.

How would any of us feel if were reduced to penury (itself humiliation enough), then had to work for starvation wages (another humiliation), as well as work for an employer whom everyone knew to be a person of beclouded wits, Godless, a numbskull, insensitive, vicious, and a dirty old man? And to have to fawn over and flatter this “creep” every day?

Not only did the young man have to work for a Gentile; he had to work with pigs, the symbol of uncleanness for Jews. And not only did he have to work with pigs; he became so hungry that even pig food smelled good — yet his Gentile boss would rather see him starve than share a little pig food with him.

The fellow has sunk so low that he knows things can’t get worse. He has made a dreadful mess of himself. He doesn’t pretend he’s possessed of a new-found love for his father; he doesn’t pretend he has suddenly recognized the truth about himself and his father. He’s simply desperate. Since he can’t be any more degraded than he is right now, he might as well go home. Matters there can’t be worse, may even be better, and who knows: perhaps his dad will let him earn his keep by cleaning out the septic tank.

It’s no wonder he’s flabbergasted at the reception his father accords him. Not a word is said about where he’s been and what he’s been doing. No attempt is made to rub his face in his mess and humiliate him publicly. Instead he’s welcomed without qualification or hesitation or reservation. His father cuts short the young man’s breastbeating and gives him robe, shoes and ring.

Robe: For the Hebrew mind, clothing is the sign of belonging. Everyone knows now that the son is fully integrated into the family. He belongs, and belongs as son.

Shoes: Slaves went barefoot. But those who are in bondage to no one and nothing; those who relish their freedom and glory in it: they wear shoes.

Ring: It was a signet ring, used to make an impression on sealing wax. Today the signet ring has been replaced by signing authority, signing authority on someone else’s bank account. The son can henceforth draw on all his father’s resources.

And then the partying began.

[3] Jesus told this parable to defend himself against the accusation that it was inappropriate for him to welcome so-called inferiors. “Inappropriate!”, Jesus gasps, dumbfounded, “What could be more appropriate? Look at the transformation my welcome has accorded these people! They have come to belong to the family of God; they know it, are grateful for it, and glory in it. They have been freed from the tyranny of their own sin and from bitterness over the sin of others. They now call upon God daily, their daily experience confirming their conviction that God wants only to share his riches with them. Why do you fault me for this?“

Silence. Dead silence. Our Lord’s opponents have nothing to say. Jesus lets them squirm in the silence they undoubtedly find difficult, and then finally he speaks. “Since you mean-spirited vipers can’t tell me or won’t tell me why you fault me, I’m going to tell you why you carp at me and fault me and sneer at me whenever you see me coming down the road with my ragged rejects. I shall tell you.”

[4] And so begins the second half of the parable, the story of the elder brother. The elder brother is the person of any era who hangs around the house of God but has never become part of the family of God; the person who works diligently for the church but has never become acquainted with Jesus Christ; contributes a little money for church-upkeep (after all, every village should have a church) but has never discovered what Paul speaks of as “the riches of God’s grace” or “the unsearchable riches of Christ” or “the riches of his glory.” The elder brother has confused proximity to the church-premises with personal acquaintance with him whose church it is.

We can’t fail to notice how frequently such a confusion occurs in the realm of the Spirit compared to how infrequently it occurs anywhere else in life.   People who sit among the spectators at Maple Leaf Gardens never think that sitting there makes them an NHL hockey player. Those who study the pitching technique of Roger Clemens never assume that they are then major league pitchers. Where knowing Jesus Christ is concerned, however, knowing him, loving him, obeying him, following him, the situation changes. This is why we frequently see the person who was baptized at fifteen months, was confirmed at fifteen years, drifts away for the next fifteen years but comes back when he has children of his own and worries about getting them past adolescence undrugged and unpregnant (but doesn’t worry about their unbelief); some time after this he disappears for good, telling us, if we make any enquiries, that he “no longer sees any point to religion.” He’s right about one thing: there is no point to religion. Every believer is aware of this. Every believer knows too that religion has nothing whatever to do with “the unsearchable riches of Christ.”

The elder brother rails against his father, “All these years I have laboured for you, and what do I get?” Clearly he thinks that his situation with his father is meant to be that of servant to master, or slave to owner, or employee to boss. He expects compensation for his toil. All the while his father has wanted a son, not an employee; a relationship, not a labour contract. When the elder brother, now embittered, speaks of the younger brother he hisses to his father, “This son of yours”; not, “my brother”, but “this son of yours.” The contempt is undeniable. His contempt discloses his acidulated heart.

“All these years I have laboured for you, and what do I get?” What does the elder brother expect to get? Something? Some thing? He doesn’t understand that where personal intimacy is concerned there is no “thing” to be offered or had as the reward or outcome of the intimacy; the intimacy itself is the reality, and the only outcome or “reward” there can ever be is the same reality, the singular intimacy, intensified. There is nothing beyond the relationship; there can’t be reward or outcome to a relationship when a relationship of utmost intimacy is the profoundest reality. As I know my wife, as I love her and trust her and find her love for me coursing back along all the beams of my love for her, the relationship is the reality. What could there ever be beyond this? How could there ever be reward for it? If after 29 years of marriage I said to my wife, “I have been your devoted, non-philandering, money-making, ever-respectable husband for lo these many years. Now what do I get for it?”; if I were to say this she’d know immediately that I had never loved her. The younger brother came to know gloriously what it is to be cherished as a son of the father; the elder brother knew only what it is to be a frustrated employee.

There are many varieties of “elder brotherism.” When I have preached on the dying terrorist on Good Friday who had five minutes to live and who cried to Jesus, “Lord, remember me!”, I have heard “elder brothers” complain, “But it’s not fair! Why should any `thug’, however, repentant, be granted exactly what is granted the saint who has served sacrificially for fifty years?” “Elder brothers” are often heard whining, “I’ve kept on the straight and narrow all my life. I had plenty of chances to have my `fling’; I had plenty of chances to make financial short-cuts, but I kept on the straight and narrow. And what did it get me? Other people now have more money and more glamorous company.”

Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order; Loyola could promise young recruits to the order only lifelong hardship in the service of Jesus Christ; Loyola prayed, “Teach us, O Lord, to serve and not to count the cost, to suffer and not to heed the wounds, to labour and not to ask for any reward, save the reward of knowing that we do your will.” Loyola always knew that the most glorious “reward” of any profound relationship is simply the intensification of the relationship itself. The younger brother came to see this; the elder brother never did. Insisting on a tit-for-tat transaction, he passed up everything that his younger brother came to know and relish.

[4] The sermon today has been about two brothers. Today is also Palm Sunday. Five days later, on Friday, Jesus found himself in the company of two criminals. In two respects at least the two criminals resembled the two brothers of the parable. Both criminals were like both brothers: their inheritance was the inheritance Paul describes in his Roman letter: “They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises, the patriarchs,… the Christ.” The inheritance is the same for all. One criminal, like one brother, remained unrepentant, sunk in resentment and bitterness and hostility. The other criminal, like the other brother, came to his senses, knew he was in the far country, knew how bleak and degrading it was there, and wanted only to go home. To this fellow Jesus said, “Today you will find yourself in my Father’s house, your home now too, and this for ever and ever.”

And that, my friends, is what our Lord longs to say to every one of you.

     Victor Shepherd

                                          Luke 14:15-24       Luke 16:1-9        Matthew 25:14-30

Arnold Toynbee, the premier historian of the past 100 years, insisted that the rise and fall of civilizations could be understood in terms of their response to challenge. A startlingly new historical development challenges a civilization in a manner that is nothing less than a crisis. In this crisis a civilization that responds positively survives and thrives. A civilization that responds negatively withers. History, Toynbee maintained, is the littered with the remains of civilizations whose response to a crisis was inadequate.

When Jesus, thirty years old, emerged from the Galilean backwoods and announced that in him God’s royal rule had visited the earth, a startlingly new historical development was underway. It challenged people, and challenged them so very profoundly as to constitute a crisis. They could respond in any way at all, but the option they didn’t have was not to respond. Not to “respond”, we all know, is to have responded; not to choose is to have made a choice. When our Lord announced the coming of the kingdom, and then amplified the nature and scope and logic of the kingdom through his teaching, he thereby challenged hearers to respond.

In our examination of three kingdom-parables today we are going to find ourselves challenged concerning our response, our responsibility, and our resourcefulness.

I: — (Luke 14:15-24) In the parable of the Great Supper, Jesus tells us that life in the kingdom; that is, life lived intimately with the king himself and for the king’s purposes – this is like a feast where the fare is appealing, nourishing, and satisfying. Life in the kingdom isn’t like a meal of tidbits that tantalize but don’t satisfy. Neither is it a meal of junk food whose gobs of salt and fat keep people gorging what ought to be left alone. Neither is it a diet of wholesome food that is nourishing yet unappealling, with the result that what we need we can only choke down. Life in our Lord’s company is at once appealing, nourishing, satisfying: a feast

Eager people say to Jesus, “Just thinking about it makes us want it.” “Really?” replies the Master; “Then you make sure you respond to the invitation. When the printed card arrives with RSVP printed at the bottom, you make sure to reply. My presence and truth; my incursion into human affairs; my refusal to be deflected or to depart – this is the biggest challenge God can put to anyone. Your response is critical, for on your response there hangs everything.” Immediately, according to the parable, the people who have just told Jesus how glad they are to be invited begin making excuses as to why they can’t come to the banquet.

Be sure to notice this: the excuses are not silly rationalizations, thinly-disguised lies or groundless evasions. They are not laughably ridiculous. Those who decline the king’s invitation do so for reasons that strike them as perfectly sound. After all, they are properly engaged in important tasks; they are preoccupied with pressing matters. Their reasons for passing up the banquet are perfectly understandable. And so are ours today.

[i] One man has just bought a field, real estate. Real estate is the single largest investment most people make. Investments are important. Don’t we all depend for our livelihood on the sound investments some people have to make? The families supported by the North American auto manufacturing industry; I think they will shortly wish that auto industry executives had made better investments. And of course anyone who is counting on drawing a pension in retirement should know that there won’t be any pensions of any sort unless pension funds have been invested soundly.

It’s easy for non-business folk (like me) to take pot-shots at the business community’s preoccupation with investment matters. But those of us who are paid for non-business activities (clergy, schoolteachers, social workers, homemakers) forget that we shall have an income only as long as business enterprises are solvent. We shouldn’t take cheap shots at those preoccupied with investments.

[ii] Another fellow who declines the king’s invitation has just bought five yoke of oxen. He has to try them out. His livelihood depends on them. Livelihoods are important. Poverty is dreadful. Unemployment is dreadful. The human warping that arises from financial deprivation is ghastly. If your livelihood or mine were at risk, wouldn’t we be preoccupied with it?

[iii] Another fellow who declines has just married. He wants to get his marriage started off on the right foot. Surely he’s to be commended. What’s more, since marriage, when good, is the most fruitful of all human relationships, and when bad, the most destructive, shouldn’t we congratulate anyone who is concerned to begin his marriage well?

The people who decline the king’s invitation aren’t stupid or shallow. Nevertheless, Jesus insists that their reasons for declining the king’s invitation, his invitation, are finally insupportable. Why? Because the truth and reality of Jesus Christ; the looming luminosity of king and kingdom; all of this radically relativizes everything else in life. When Jesus Christ calls us, whatever else is however important, it’s now relatively less important. When Jesus Christ calls us, all other claims to ultimacy are less-than-ultimate. They can only be penultimate.

John’s gospel says much about eternal life. Eternal life isn’t this life stretched out endlessly. Eternal life is the life of the eternal One – God – breaking into this life and transforming it. Our reconciliation to God and the righteousness arising from it; this isn’t something merely added on to our current concerns. Our reconciliation to God and the righteousness arising from it is the revaluing, transmogrifying, of our current concerns.

Unless we grasp the truth here, our concern for a sound economy will eventually put us on a financial treadmill whose goal is simply money for money’s sake. Unless we are seized by the uncompromisable ultimacy of Christ and kingdom, our concerns concerning our livelihood will become a survival tactic wherein we have reduced ourselves to survival mechanisms. Unless the king’s call calls us to him effectually,our concern with getting our marriage off to a good start will find us engrossed in a tiny world of two people to the exclusion of all other persons and all other claims upon us.

In short, to decline the king’s invitation, however sensible seemingly, in fact is both foolish and tragic. It’s foolish in that joyful self-abandonment to Christ the king would purify and preserve all other relationships and undertakings in life. It’s tragic in that to pass up the king’s invitation is to forfeit his blessing and hand oneself over to the dark forces that are always at work in a fallen world.

Every day you and I are invited to the king’s banquet, there to be sustained by – the king himself. Therefore every day we are challenged to respond positively to his invitation.

II: (Matthew 25:14-30) — Not only are we challenged to a response; we are challenged to a responsibility. In the parable of the talents we are told of a man who entrusts his wealth to three fellows, and then goes on a journey. When he returns he asks each fellow in turn, “What have you done with what I entrusted to you?” Two fellows have multiplied their trust, and are congratulated for doing so. The third fellow, knowing that his master is demanding, has decided to play safe: he has put the money in the ground, and then dug it up upon the master’s return. To his surprise his master is angry and accuses him of irresponsibility. The parable concludes with the haunting words “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

What’s the treasure that the master has entrusted to you and me? I’m convinced we are often unaware of what talent or treasure we have. If someone can sing like a canary we say she’s “gifted” or “talented.” Alongside the canary-singer we conclude we have no gift, no talent. To be sure, we don’t have that talent. So what?

We tend to look for eye-catching, dramatic talents. I’m convinced we’re looking in the wrong direction. What about the talent of welcoming visitors to worship, and greeting them warmly, genuinely, in such a way as to defuse their nervousness and dispel their feeling of strangeness?

We lack the gift of public speaking, or eloquent rhetoric? What about the gift of making our little Sunday School a place that delights children and where the warmth they soak up from one of us becomes, under God, a foretaste of the warmth of the Saviour’s embrace that they will own in faith when they mature? What’s any eye-catching, dramatic talent compared to the gentle reassurance the most ordinary homemaker can impart to the woman who has just been discharged from the psychiatric ward and who feels more fragile than a cobweb?

The point of the parable, we must remember, is that regardless of what our talent is, we mustn’t bury it; we mustn’t submerge it because it appears slight alongside the talents of others. Whatever gift we have we must use, and use yet again, only to find that as we do, the Master is pleased and his people are helped.

What’s the treasure that the master has entrusted to you and me? On a different note, I’m convinced there’s a sacred trust we must treasure and develop corporately. I’m speaking now of the “deposit” (Paul’s word) of the faith. You and I are not the first Christians. Are we going to be the last? Only if we “bury” the deposit of the faith and it disappears with us. But of course we’re not going to do this.

I like to speak of the deposit of the faith as the totality of Christian memory. Think for a minute of the person who has lost his memory. We say he’s amnesiac. We say he’s to be pitied in that he can’t remember where he parked his car or how he’s to get to work or where he left his briefcase.

To be sure, the amnesiac is to be pitied – but for reasons far more profound than this. You see, the person with no memory at all doesn’t know who he is. The person with no memory at all has no identity. And therefore the person with no memory can’t be trusted. The reason the amnesiac can’t be trusted isn’t that he’s more wicked than those who possess a memory. He’s no more wicked than the rest of us. He can’t be trusted simply because he doesn’t have an identity.

Let’s apply all this to a congregation, then to a denomination, then to the church catholic. Here in Schomberg we read from the older testament, for instance, every Sunday. It’s important to read from the older testament. People who don’t soon deny the ancestry of Jesus. Then they turn Jesus into a wax figure (a Gentile wax figure) that they can remould as they wish, with the result that the supposed saviour of the world ends up indistinguishable from the world he’s supposed to save. Worst of all, people who don’t read the older testament become anti-judaistic; that is, they regard the faith of the synagogue as obsolete or antiquated. Next they become something horrific: anti-semitic. Anti-judaism (contempt for the faith of the synagogue) always generates anti-semitism (contempt for Jewish people themselves.)

Again, at every Communion service in Schomberg we recite the Apostles’ Creed. We could as readily recite the Nicene Creed. It’s important that we recite one of the historic creeds of the church catholic, for otherwise we’d be advertising ourselves as sectarian. Yes, we are Presbyterians. Are Presbyterians screwball snake-handlers who twist Jesus into a fourteen karat jerk? Or are Presbyterians Christians with an angle of vision concerning the holy catholic faith that contributes to the holy catholic church? Every time we recite one of the historic creeds we are endorsing the faith of the holy catholic church.

But of course we do more in Schomberg than look back to the faith of the church catholic. We also interpret the faith concerning the present and the future. In other words, the treasure that’s been entrusted to us we are preserving, to be sure, but more than preserving: we are having that treasure “bear interest” as the deposit of the faith entrusted to us becomes ever richer for the sake of those who come after us.

III: (Luke 16:1-8) –The last parable we are looking at today challenges us to resourcefulness. Jesus has uttered a parable that appears to commend a dishonest person. In the parable of the unjust steward a man learns that his steward is cheating on him. The steward, found out now, says to himself, “I’m in hot water for sure. I’m going to be fired. I’m not strong enough to be a labourer. I’m not smart enough to be a teacher. I’m not humble enough to draw welfare. What will I do? I know what I’ll do. I’ll tell each of the persons in debt to my boss that that person’s debt has been cut 50%. These people in turn will be so happy to have their indebtedness reduced that they’ll all give me a kickback. I’ll be set for life.” The fellow, needless to say, is a scoundrel. Jesus does not commend the fellow for his dishonesty. Jesus does, however, draw our attention to the scoundrel’s resourcefulness as he says to us, “If a scoundrel can be that resourceful in ‘feathering his own nest’, can’t you be equally resourceful in the service of the kingdom? Can’t you be that imaginative, that daring, that ingenious?”

If you and I sat down together for thirty minutes we could think of many imaginative, resourceful things to do in either congregational life or our individual lives. This morning, however, I want to speak of something foundational to our Christian faith and life: the relation between adapting and adopting.

As each generation of Christ’s people arises, that generation has to adapt “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) to modernity. Note that the faith, the substance, the deposit of what we believe, has been delivered “once for all.” It doesn’t change. But circumstances are always changing. Therefore we have to adapt unchanging truth to changing circumstances. If we fail to adapt to modernity, we can’t speak to our contemporaries. While we may learn much from John Calvin and John Wesley, we don’t live in the 16^th Century, and we don’t live in the 18^th Century. We can learn from these men but we can never copy them. We should never attempt to duplicate them. We don’t even speak Wesley’s English. In the 18^th Century if someone were profoundly stirred by a sermon, it was said that that person’s bowels had moved. This isn’t what we mean by “bowel-movement” in 21^st Century English. We always have to adapt the unchanging substance of the faith to changing circumstances.

On the other hand, as each generation of Christ’s people arises, that generation must never adopt the mindset of modernity. If we adopt the mindset of modernity, we have forfeited the gospel. We have performed the grand counter miracle: we’ve turned wine into water. Now we are experts at communicating, to be sure, but we’ve nothing to communicate. At this point the substance of the faith has been thrown away in the interests of a “with-it” preoccupation with communicating.

Let me say it again. If we fail to adapt, we’ve retained the gospel to be sure, but it’s wrapped up in a parcel, a language, an imagery that’s foreign to modernity, and therefore modernity can never hear the gospel. If, however, we adopt, then we’ve developed wonderfully attractive packaging but with nothing inside the package. The line we must all walk along, the line between adapting and adopting; this line is finer than a hair and harder than diamond.

It’s right here that our resourcefulness, critical resourcefulness, has to be deployed relentlessly.

And in fact we are challenged to deploy such critical resourcefulness all the time.

Think of the sermon. The sermon attempts to communicate the unchanging gospel in terms of the constantly changing thought-forms and language of modernity.

So does a Sunday School lesson. So does our mid-week adult discussion group. So does the answer a parent gives to her child’s question: “Mom, why do I have to go to church? What’s ‘good’ about Good Friday?”

So does the social outreach work of the church. We support the ministry of Evangel Hall. Its ministry has a social outreach component to it, but the ministry of Evangel Hall (or any such endeavour of the church) is never reducible to social work. Plainly social outreach in the name of Christ has to “adapt” or it won’t come within range of helping anyone; on the other hand, if it “adopts”, then the social witness of the gospel has been reduced to secular social work.

Don’t ask me to spell out exactly how we walk along the line between “adapt” and “adopt”. Don’t ask me because I don’t think it can be spelled out in advance. We learn to do it as we have to do it. And in truth we are doing it all the time.

The parable of the unjust steward is our Lord’s command that his people remain imaginatively, daringly resourceful.

When Jesus Christ emerged from the anonymity of his hometown he announced the kingdom. It was a challenge, a challenge so far-reaching as to constitute a crisis. His parables challenge you and me relentlessly concerning our response, our responsibility, and our resourcefulness.

                                                                                                      Victor Shepherd          

   May 2006                   

               Luke 17:5-6                Daniel 3:13-18                     Romans 1:8-17

I: — “Faith,” a schoolboy once said, “is believing what you know isn’t true.” The boy couldn’t have been right. Everywhere in his public ministry Jesus endeavours to create faith, nourish faith, strengthen faith. Disciples ask him to increase their faith. The book of Hebrews reminds us that without faith we can’t please God. Faith is a matter of believing what we know isn’t true? Ridiculous. Yet it’s no more ridiculous than other misunderstandings and perversions that abound.

[1] Think of the perversion that virtually equates faith with gullibility, with suggestibility. Some industrial sales manuals maintain that potential customers differ in their “faith capacity.” What’s meant is that some people are more readily “taken in” than others. P.T. Barnum, the inventor of the circus sideshow, maintained that there’s a sucker born every minute. No one disagrees. Still, when we see people “fished in” by religious hucksters we know that such gullibility has nothing at all to do with that faith which Jesus longs to see flourish in us all.

[2] Another perversion is the notion that faith is a blind believing, a blind following, once the intellect is wilfully suspended. “Put your brain on the shelf, and then the way will be open for faith.” Older adults sometimes recommend this approach – foolishly – when thinking young people are first confronted with geology (the age of the earth) or biology (evolution) or psychology (the fact and influence of the unconscious mind.) Thinking young people shouldn’t be told, “All that stuff is hypothetical. Put it aside. You’ve simply got to believe.”

Wilfully suspending one’s intellect in the interests of a blind believing and blind following is never God-honouring. God requires us to love him with our mind. We should never encourage mindlessness in anyone. All we need do is ponder the cults and assorted “isms” that ensnare and distort younger people and some who aren’t so young. And if the word “cult” suggests a bizarreness so remote from us that it would never seduce us, then think of ideology or advertising or social pressure. And while we are at it we should think of something more formal than subtle advertising or social pressure; namely, intellectual life. Twenty-five years ago I was asked to conduct a congregational event exploring the question, “Where have all the young people gone?” Those present blamed the university; they blamed the philosophy department in particular. The philosophy professor was denounced as the devil in disguise. I told the meeting that I studied philosophy ardently for five glorious years. Am I the devil in disguise? Right now I teach philosophy. Do I foster unbelief? If faith can’t survive rigorous intellectual examination then faith is no more than superstition.

[3] Another misunderstanding is that faith is a matter of working up religious feelings and affections. We tend to associate such effusiveness with the charismatic movement. Let me say right now that the charismatic movement has been a blessing to the church. At the same time, it has unfortunately tended to make experience(s) of a peculiar sort the touchstone of “true faith.” As a result some people are left trying to work up psycho-religious vividness. If they do manage to work it up they are tempted to think themselves religiously superior; if they don’t work it up they are tempted to think themselves spiritual failures. But in fact the concentration on emotional self-stimulation produces an artificiality that indicates neither the presence of faith nor its absence. Faith is never a matter of working up some kind of intrapsychic heat and fireworks.

II(1): — Then what is faith? Faith is entrusting as much of ourselves as we know of ourselves to as much of God as we know of him. This is how it begins. Regardless of how much we think we know of ourselves, we know very little. And if we are taking our first steps in faith, then of course we know very little of God. Still, we begin by exposing as much of ourselves as we know of ourselves to as much of God as we know of him – which is to say, faith begins as simple encounter with God. It is an elemental meeting with God; dialogue with God. It isn’t dialogue, of course, in the sense of presumptuous chattiness. It isn’t off-putting overfamiliarity. But unquestionably it’s a deliberate meeting with him and self-exposure to him. Specifically, faith is an encounter with God that God initiates; after all, he has pursued us since the day we were conceived. Through the encounter God initiates with us he awakens us to him, turns us to face him, and wants only that we look upon him as longingly and lovingly as he has long looked upon us.

To say it all differently: in Jesus Christ, and specifically in the arms of the crucified, God embraces us. In the strength and desire that his embrace lends us, we now want to embrace him in return. Faith, then, is an encounter with God as he awakens us to his initiative and awakens our response.

For years now I have quietly smiled to myself as I have observed human behaviour that reflects animal behaviour. When human beings are pressured (hunger, for instance, even the hunger of having missed only one meal) I have noticed that what we have in common with the animal world rises to the fore. This shouldn’t surprise us; after all, the Genesis sagas tell us that we and the animals were created on the same “day.” We and they are cousins. When I was very young I was told that the apes and we differ in that (among other characteristics) apes don’t have an opposable thumb. And then one day at the Metro Zoo I saw a gorilla pick up a straw between its thumb and forefinger. Then perhaps we differ instead inasmuch as God loves us humans? Scripture informs us, however, that God loves the animals and provides for them and protects them. God loves all of his creation and is grieved to see it abused. Scripture insists just as pointedly, however, that God speaks to human beings alone. God addresses humankind alone. Faith therefore always has the character of a dialogue with him who is always trying to get our attention.

By “dialogue” we mustn’t understand “after dinner conversation.” It isn’t an armchair matter. Engagement with God can be riddled with turbulence. Our engagement with God can take the form of anger as well as elation, accusation as well as adoration. Following his all-night encounter with God Jacob’s name is changed from “Jacob” (“deceiver”) to “ Israel ” (“he who contends with God”). In all genuine faith there’s an element of wrestling with God. When someone dear to us dies horribly; when disappointment falls on us like a collapsing wall; when betrayal savages us and shocks us, it’s appropriate that we react as Abraham and Isaac, Moses and Jeremiah react: “What are you up to? Why did you let me down? Where were you when I needed you most?” Everywhere in scripture one of the surest signs of faith in God is his people’s anger at him. For these people at least are serious about God.

We must never think that genuine faith in God means that someone is henceforth perfect, understands perfectly, behaves perfectly. God’s people are his people just because they have encountered him and are serious about him. Still, their engagement with him can and will contain elements of confusion, imperfection, moral deficiency and spiritual defectiveness. Everywhere in scripture Abraham is foreparent of all believers, the prototype of faith. Under terrible pressure Abraham lied twice, passing off his wife as his sister, aware that if men wanted to rape his wife they would kill him first; if they wanted to rape his sister they wouldn’t bother to kill him. “She’s my sister,” Abraham shouted. Cowardly? Yes. Self-serving? Yes. False? Yes. Deplorable? Yes. It all disqualifies him as person of faith and even model of faith? No. Perfection is never a condition for the reality and solidity of faith.

James and John selfishly seek places of honour in the kingdom – but they are still disciples. Peter lies and betrays his Lord three times over. Martha fiddles with trivia even as the master visits her home. Martin Luther King jr., civil rights leader and martyr, behaves with women in a manner that no one can extenuate. John Wesley, leader of the Eighteenth Century Awakening, lacks self-perception to the point of appearing ludicrous. But none of this disqualifies people as disciples. Our engagement with God is real, true, substantial, all-determining even as it remains riddled with assorted deficits, deficiencies and imperfections.

II(2): — Faith is more than encounter, however; it is also understanding. Imagine that we have newly been exposed to Mozart’s music. Gradually we are drawn into the world of Mozart’s music. We know beyond doubt that this world is real. It’s so very real, in fact, that it brings before us riches and wonders and human possibilities that we had never before had reason to imagine. Now at this point we understand next to nothing of music theory or music history or music technique. Still, once we’ve been exposed to Mozart’s music and it has captivated us we surely want to learn something of Mozart’s music, its structure and its glory. We surely want to learn something of his relation to other composers, his place in the musical tradition, his musical “signatures” by which we can identify characteristics that tell us, “This is Mozart.” As our understanding grows we find that our new perception in turn magnifies our delight in his music. The result is that we appropriate ever-greater Mozartian depths and riches.

Understanding does as much for us in our encounter with God. Once he’s got our attention, however he managed to do that; once he’s turned us to face him, moved us to embrace him in light of his embracing us; once we are captivated by that sphere which he is himself, we are constrained to gain understanding. We do gain it. Gaining it doesn’t mean merely that our minds are richer than before (even though this is not to be slighted); it doesn’t mean that we now have more words in our vocabulary; it means, rather, that our richer understanding in turn admits us to richer depths in God himself.

We must always remember that God is as upset at spiritual immaturity as we are at physical or psychological immaturity. Greater understanding is one aspect of spiritual maturity. We can taste the frustration and annoyance of New Testament writers who belong to Christian communities where there’s little or no advance in Christian understanding. Typical in this regard is the frustration of the unnamed author of the epistle to the Hebrews: “Milk is for babies; solid food is for grownups. Therefore let’s leave the elementary doctrines of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying the foundations all over again.” The author, exasperated, is saying, “Can’t we move past Grade One? Are we always going to be at the level of ‘Now I lay me down to sleep’?” We all know that stunted development anywhere in life is tragic. The stunted development of faith is no less grotesque and no less tragic. I disagree wholly with the suggestion, usually uttered with the air of superior wisdom, that sermons have to be scaled down to a twelve year old level because that’s the understanding level most adults have (supposedly.) To capitulate here is to guarantee a congregation of twelve year olds.

Faith is going to be strengthened; faith will come to possess greater certainty; faith will avoid being blown away by devastation or fished in by hucksters only as the understanding aspect of faith is enlarged and deepened and enriched. Parents will be equipped to provide Christian nurture for their children only as parents themselves move past Grade One. A congregation gains resilience and wisdom and stability and depth only as maturity is gained. Understanding of the way and word and work of God is essential.

At the same time we should be aware that greater understanding of God issues in greater understanding of life under God. It yields an understanding of history; not of the details of history, but of history as the theatre (or at least one theatre) of God’s activity. It yields an understanding of the human; not the sort that a medical education provides, but awareness that human existence is inextricably related to God and can be apprehended only as God himself is apprehended. It yields an understanding of marriage; for marriage is a covenant modelled after God’s covenant with his people. God keeps his covenant with us when we don’t keep our covenant with him.   This is to say, marriage ought always to aim at reflecting the faithfulness, patience and persistence of the God who loves us more than he loves himself. Faith understands both the necessity and the limitations of human reason; i.e., faith understands that irrationality is inexcusable even as rationalization threatens at all times.

Faith includes understanding, an understanding that newly understands the truth of God and the truth of God’s creation.

II(3): — Faith is something more: a venture, a life-venture. Life is more than understanding. Life is a venture that has to be lived. Faith is life ventured under God.

Right here some people recoil. They have been wounded so very badly in the past, or fear being so badly wounded in the future, that venture is the last thing they want. They want to establish a corner of life that they feel to be safe and secure, and then freeze it; preserve it; hang on to it; protect it. Understandable as this is, however, to do this is simply to put in time until the undertaker closes the lid and the pastor drops the handful of earth. The book of Hebrews recognizes the temptation and its consequent peril: “We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed; we are of those who have faith….” Throughout the book of Hebrews life is depicted as a journey, a pilgrimage, a venture. Plainly the author appears to think there are only two possibilities: either we shrink back and shrivel up, or we keep moving ahead even if at times the venture is a little more adventuresome than we thought it was going to be.

When I was seven years old my family rented a summer cottage for one week. I longed to row the rowboat. But I was also afraid of the lake. I tied the boat to shore with a ten-foot rope and began to row. After two strokes of the oars the boat jerked awkwardly, drifted back to the dock, and I rowed again. I had done this several times when my father said, “If you want to row the boat and go somewhere, untie it.” Then he saw my divided mind: I wanted with all my heart to venture forth on the lake but I was afraid to. What could he do to quell my fear and free me to row the boat into deeper water? He climbed into the boat with me. I untied it and we set off together.

In the person of his Son, Christ Jesus our Lord, God has embarked on the life-venture with us. The Easter narrative of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus reminds us that the same risen Lord who kept company with the two men then keeps company with all his disciples now. Because he does, our fear is checked, checked enough to let us get started on the venture and to keep us in it.

When I say “venture” I don’t mean “outing.” An outing is a recreational activity, like a picnic or a hike. I don’t wish to suggest either that “venture” always entails what’s grim. Still, on the whole life is more serious than an outing, with more at stake.

And when I say “venture” I don’t meant that we are to pursue the extraordinary and the heroic. To do this is first to render life artificial and then to discover that our “heroism” isn’t heroic enough.

Life is ventured when we face, face up to, face ahead despite, whatever life casts up. Life is ventured when by God’s grace we endeavour to do something with it beyond utter passivity or sheer complaining. From time to time life is going to give us lemons. We can suck them, only to sour ourselves and others, or we can make lemonade. Our Lord Jesus Christ, always on the road with us, the pioneer of our faith; he happens to be rather good at making lemonade.

At one point the people of Israel found themselves in the wilderness on their journey to the promised land. Slavery was behind them. The promised land was ahead of them, yet so far ahead of them as to be out of sight. Wilderness existence was wearing them down, so much so that they were tempted to renounce the venture. A word was given Moses to give to them: “Tell the people of Israel to go forward.”

At the beginning of the day and at its ending faith isn’t wilful stupidity or superstition. Faith is an encounter with God in which our understanding of him and us and our world continues to grow. Faith is a venture in which we are going to meet setbacks but in the face of which we are not going to shrink back and shrivel up. And when we are stuck with lemons, we shall cling more tightly to our faithful companion on the venture who turned cross into triumph and in whose company lemonade-making is never impossible.

Then may God increase your faith, even as he increases mine as well.

                                                                                               Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                 
February 2004

Luke 15:11-24          Luke 18:9-14           Matthew 18:21-35

People are as religious today as ever they were.  To be sure, the media keep telling us that our era has become thoroughly secularized. They even remind us Canadians that the most secularized area in all of North America is the province of Quebec , formerly the most religious (apparently).

When the media insist that our era has become secularized, however, what they are saying is that the church is in decline. They are right about one thing: per capita church attendance is lower now in Canada than it’s been for several years.  But to say this is not to say that people are any less religious.  Think about The DaVinci Code.   I’ve read it. The book has now sold scores of millions of copies. The fact that people buy it, devour it, talk about it, and give it a credibility it doesn’t deserve, ought to tell us how religious people are. Is this good?  Is it better to be religious than irreligious (assuming it’s possible to be irreligious)?

When I was a student minister in Northern Ontario (1969) I was instructed to ask a Provincial Park Officer if the United Church could conduct a service for campers throughout the summer.  Cheerfully he replied, “I don’t see why not; a little religion never hurt anyone.”

But the Park Officer was wrong.  We must always remember that the less religious people were, the better Jesus got along with them. The more religious people were, the more they hated him.  Why? Because our Lord maintained that religion is a barrier between people and God.  Faith, on the other hand, binds us to God; faith is our bond with our Lord. Religion is our attempt at justifying ourselves before a deity we’re not too sure about; religion is our attempt at getting on the right side of, or getting something from, a deity whose nature we regard as rather “iffy”. Faith, on the other hand, is our admission that we have nothing to plead before the just judge; faith is our admission that we can’t bribe God or placate him or manipulate him or impress him in any way.  Faith is….

Let’s not try to define it any more precisely for now.  Let’s go instead to one of our Lord’s parables where he tells us the difference between religion and faith.

I: — It’s the parable of the “Pharisee and the tax-collector”, as we like to call it. It’s a parable, says Jesus, directed at “some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others.”  A Pharisee and a tax-collector go to church together.  The Pharisee is morally circumspect.  He’s squeaky clean, consistent in it all as well.  He’s a genuinely good man.  There’s nothing deficient or defective in his religious observance or his moral integrity. There isn’t a whiff of hypocrisy about him.  As soon as he gets to church he reminds God how circumspect and how consistent he is.

Tax-collectors, we should note, were the most despised group in Israel . They made a living collecting taxes for the Roman occupation.  This branded them publicly as turn-coats.  Moreover, for every dollar they collected for the Roman occupation they collected two dollars for themselves.  This branded them publicly as exploitative, ready to “fleece” their own people, greedy, and heartless concerning the kinfolk they kept impoverished. The Pharisee looked at this one tax-collector in church, looked away and then looked up, nose in air as he said “God, I thank you I am not like other men.  They are extortioners, unjust, adulterous.  I’m none of this. I am not like them. I’m not at all like this creep standing beside me.”   (Jews stand to pray, remember.)   The tax-collector, we’re told, made no religious claim at all.  He simply cried, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

“It’s this latter fellow”, said Jesus; “it’s the tax-collector who went home justified.”   To be justified is to be declared rightly related to God.  To be justified is to have the sinner’s capsized relationship with God righted.

The Pharisee was out to impress God, curry favour with God, gain God’s recognition for his religious superiority.         This is religion at its worst.  Faith, on the other hand; faith is our humble acknowledgement that we stand before God as sinners who merit only condemnation and therefore can only throw ourselves on God’s mercy.  Faith is our gratitude for God’s free acceptance as we confess that we deserve nothing of the kind.  Faith is our trust in the provision God has made for everyone in the cross, which provision God alone has paid for since only he can, which provision we need as we need nothing else.  But the Pharisee in the parable wants none of this.  He wants recognition; he wants congratulation.

We are told that both men, Pharisee and tax-collector, go to church to worship.  Worship, we should all know by now, is self-forgetful adoration of God. Self-forgetful?  When the Pharisee arrives at church all he can talk about is himself. “I fast twice a week.” (Most people fasted once per year.  This fellow really thinks he can accumulate credit with God.)   “I tithe all that I get.” (Most people tithed only their agricultural produce.) “I thank you, God, that I’m not like other men.” (He thinks he’s everybody’s superior, at the same time that he’s self-engrossed.)

Haven’t you found that people who are caught up in ceaseless religious busyness, endless religious self-preoccupation, are secretly or overtly expecting recognition from God? – even congratulation from God – even compensation from God? – not to mention adulation from their neighbours?  What is this except ever-swelling pride?

Faith, on the other hand, is always soaked in humility. Faith is the empty-handed response (“Nothing in my hand I bring” says the hymn writer) of the person who knows that God is the All-Seeing One whom she trusts to be the All-Saving One.  Faith is surrender to that Judge whom she is trusting to be the Pardoner.   Sin breaks God’s heart; sin provokes God’s anger; sin arouses God’s disgust.  And faith? Faith clings to Jesus Christ, for in him we know that God’s mercy transcends and outweighs even his heartbreak and anger and disgust.  Faith clings to Jesus Christ just because faith knows that he who is both Father and Judge is Father finally, Father ultimately, Father forever. Faith boasts of nothing; faith trusts God for one thing, everything, except that it isn’t a “thing” at all but rather is – is what, exactly?

II: — It’s the warmest welcome anyone can ever receive; it’s an ocean of joy spilling out of an ecstatic parent and cascading upon returning son or daughter.  The second parable in our discussion of the grace of the kingdom concerns a young man who wishes his father were dead.  (Isn’t this what is meant when he says he wants his inheritance even though his father is still alive?)   This young man is given his inheritance, and he squanders it all in juvenile rebelliousness and shallow revelry and matters better left unmentioned that nonetheless cost as much cash as he has.  Lonely, hungry, disgraced, he smartens up.  He knows that any treatment he might get at home, however severe or cold or caustic, is going to be better than his present misery.  He decides to go home.

When he arrives home, is he put on probation? That is, is he told he’s “on trial” for six months and his “case” will be reviewed then and if he’s “proved” himself by then there just might be a place for him in the basement or the room over the garage?   He says he’s willing to be downgraded from son to servant, since even servants have a dry roof and adequate food.  He knows that if he’s humiliated upon returning home he’ll just have to suck it up as part of the price one pays for roof and food.

When he’s still a quarter of a mile down the road his father sees him, rushes out to meet him, hugs him and babbles deliriously, “Home; my son is home; can’t you all see he’s home?”, not caring if neighbours think him silly or tasteless or senile or hysterical. There’s no attempt at humiliating the youngster, no “we’ll have to wait and see”, no downgrading of any sort.  The fellow comes home prepared to grovel, only to find that shamefully though he’s behaved, he’s welcomed home with honour.

Abraham Lincoln refused to call the American Civil War “The Civil War.”  Many people called it “The War Between the States”.   Southerners called it “The War of Northern Aggression.”   (Scarcely, is all I can say.) Lincoln always referred to it by its official name, and its official name was then and is now, “The War of the Great Rebellion.”         Southerners who had taken up arms in “The War of the Great Rebellion” were rebels, Lincoln insisted, rebels only: treacherous, treasonous.  Everyone knew how Lincoln spoke and why. As the war was about to end Lincoln was asked how he would treat the rebel Southerners once they had been defeated. “I shall treat them,” replied the president, “as though they had never been away.”

Shortly after I was posted to my first congregation an agitated man came to see me.  He and his wife had separated several years earlier.  He was still bitter and angry.  In his bitterness and anger he missed no opportunity to flay his ex-wife’s family, anyone who was related to his ex-wife in any way.  One day he was lashing out yet again when he added something I hadn’t heard before: “I’ll tell you one thing more.  Several years ago, when my wife and I were having difficulties, my wife’s sister-in-law, whom you see every Sunday in church; she told me she was available any night I didn’t have anything to do.  What do you think of that?  What do you think of her?” I replied, “Once upon a time a fellow came home and his father exulted, ‘You’re home. I don’t want to hear what you did in the far country.         Too much information. All that matters is you’re home.’”

When the tax-collector cried to God “Won’t you be merciful to me a sinner?” while the Pharisee beside him kept on blowing and boasting, the tax-collector was accorded the same welcome in that moment that Jesus spoke of in his best-loved parable.

III: — In light of the reception God accords us, what is our response to be?   What’s our responsibility, our task?         What attitude and act on our part reflect God’s attitude and act concerning us? It’s this: we who have been drenched in God’s mercy – the cross – are now to extend a similar mercy, pardon, forgiveness to all who offend us.

And there’s nothing more difficult.  There’s nothing in the world more difficult than forgiving someone who has hurt us; not irked us, not annoyed us, not pricked us, but stabbed us. We are fallen creatures, and to fallen creatures there is nothing sweeter than revenge. We can spend hours fantasizing as to how we are going to even the score; how we can humiliate someone with the clever putdown.  We can spend days cultivating the turn of phrase whose patent brilliance is exceeded only by its viciousness.  We can give no end of time and ardour to this, all the while telling ourselves that we have a right to it, even an obligation to defend our honour and save face. Let me say it again. There’s nothing more difficult than forgiving someone who has wounded us.  It can be likened only to crossbearing.  Still, we who are the beneficiaries of Christ’s cross mustn’t now try to shirk our own.

For such a time as this Jesus utters the parable of the unforgiving debtor. He tells us of a man who owed a colossal sum, a sum so vast there was no possibility of his ever retiring the debt.  The amount mentioned in the parable is 10,000 talents – which is to say, 15 years’ wages for a labourer. In an act of unprecedented and unforeseen generosity the creditor wiped the debt off the man’s account.  On his way home this man, still exulting in the astounding favour pressed upon him, came upon a neighbour who owed him a hundred denarii, one day’s wages. He grabbed his neighbour by the throat and shouted “Pay up; all of it.”

When the two debts are compared the unforgiving debtor appears both hard-hearted and stupid.  He’s hard-hearted in that a man who has just been spared unpayable debt and therefore spared imprisonment ought to have an overflowing heart. He’s stupid in that a man whose net worth has just improved by a million dollars shouldn’t be courting stomach ulcers over a piddling sum.

In the face of God’s undeserved, oceanic mercy inundating us, we appear equally hard-hearted and equally stupid if we then insist on our pound of flesh.

No doubt some of you are itching to tell me that the injury done to us isn’t piddling.  It isn’t a trifle we can brush off after a good night’s sleep. The injury done to us, in truth, has been severe enough to leave us limping, even limping for life.

I deny none of this.  Nonetheless, it’s only genuine injury that needs to be forgiven. Trifles don’t need to be forgiven; trifles can always be brushed off.  But the injury that can’t be brushed off can only be forgiven.

Let’s be clear as to what forgiveness doesn’t mean.

(i)         As I’ve already indicated, forgiveness doesn’t mean that only an imaginary offence has occurred and only feathers have been ruffled.  Forgiveness presupposes genuine wound, grievous wound, bleeding wound. Still, forgiving the person who has wounded us will keep us from bleeding to death.

(ii) Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we shall always be able to pick up where we left off with the person who has harmed us.  There are some relationships where injury visited upon one party shifts the relationship from the right foot to the left foot, and the relationship never gets back on the right foot.  But at least forgiveness keeps resentment from gnawing us to death.

(iii)         Forgiveness doesn’t mean that the attitude and act of forgiving henceforth spares either the person forgiving or the person forgiven all the consequences of the offence. Once the offence has occurred, once the stone has been dropped into the water, nothing can be done about the ripples.  But at least forgiveness means that neither party is going to be drowned.

The parable of the unforgiving debtor ends on a severe note. Jesus insists that the fellow who had received the stupendous pardon and yet had refused to pardon his neighbour; this fellow finally forfeited his own pardon. How could this happen?

There are two ways of preventing water from running through a garden hose. One way is to turn off the tap; the other is to turn off the nozzle.  God will never turn off the tap; he will never revoke his pardon of us. But whether his pardon continues to flow through us, or whether we forfeit that pardon, depends on what we do at the nozzle end.         Mercy received is meant to be mercy shared.

Today we have examined three parables pertaining to the grace of the kingdom.  They are logically connected.         We cease trying to impress God, out-achieve our neighbour religiously, and instead we simply cast ourselves upon God’s mercy.  He then receives us joyfully without humiliating us or putting us on probation or “downing” us in any way.  Finally, the mercy he has poured upon us we don’t stifle or stop up but rather let flow through us upon others.

Life in the kingdom of God is grace; grace first, grace last, grace always.

                                                                                         Rev. Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

 May 2006

                Luke 18:9-14               Isaiah 55:1-9            1^st Timothy 1:1-2

I: — What comes to mind as soon as you hear the word “Protestant”?   Many people have told me that they think first of protest; we Protestants engendered a protest movement, and we’ve never moved beyond a protest mentality. We exist only as we criticise someone else.

If this were the case, then Protestantism would be inherently parasitic. Parasites are creatures that can’t live on their own; they have to latch onto another creature and draw their sustenance from it.  Protestants, if protesters by definition, would forever need something to protest against or else we couldn’t survive.  Protestants, if protesters by definition, would always know what they are against but likely wouldn’t know, if they even cared, what they are for.  Protestants, if protesters by definition, would be incurable contrarians, chronic nay-sayers and fault-finders.

The truth is, the Latin word (you’ve heard me say before that Latin is the language of the Reformation) protestare is entirely positive. Protestare means to affirm, to assert, to declare, to testify, to proclaim.  The Reformation didn’t begin negatively as a protest movement.  It began positively as an announcement, a declaration, an affirmation, a witness. There was nothing parasitic about the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century and there is nothing parasitic about the Protestant ethos now.

If protestare means to affirm, declare, testify, what are we declaring?   To what do we bear witness?

II: — The Reformers upheld the priority of grace in all the ways and works of God; the priority of grace in God’s approach to us and God’s activity within us.  The Reformers maintained that over the centuries the priority of grace had become obscured, silted over, as there was gradually covered up what ought always to be at the forefront of Christian faith, understanding and discipleship.

If people today are asked what they understand by “grace”, most of them will say “God’s unmerited favour.” They aren’t wrong. But what they’ve said is more a description than a definition.  Grace, according to scripture, is God’s faithfulness; specifically, God’s faithfulness to his covenant with us; God’s faithfulness to his promise eve to be our God, always to be with us and for us, never to fail us or forsake us, never to abandon us in frustration or quit on us in disgust.

God keeps the covenant-promise he makes to us. We, however, violate the covenant-promise – always and everywhere to be his people – we make to him. We are sinners.  When God’s faithfulness meets our sin, his faithfulness takes the form of mercy. In our reading of the Apostle Paul’s letters we can’t fail to notice how often he begins the letter by stating “Grace, mercy and peace to you.” Grace, as we’ve noted already, is God’s covenant faithfulness.         Mercy is God’s covenant faithfulness meeting our sin and overcoming it as God forgives us our sin and delivers us from it.  Mercy, then, is God’s covenant faithfulness relieving us of sin’s guilt and releasing us from sin’s grip.         Peace – here’s where you have pay extra-close attention – is not peace of mind or peace in our heart (at least not in the first instance).   Peace here is shalom. Paul is a Jew, and when he speaks of peace he has in mind the Hebrew understanding of shalom.  Shalom is God’s restoration of his people.  Shalom, peace, then, is the same as salvation.

Crucial to the Reformation was a biblical understanding of how all this occurs.  According to scripture, God expects us to honour our covenant with him. He looks everywhere in the human creation, only to discover that he can’t find one, single human being who fulfils his or her covenant with God.  Whereupon God says to himself, “If humankind’s covenant with me is going to be humanly fulfilled (only a human, after all, can fulfil humankind’s covenant with God), then I’ll have to do it myself.”   And so we have the Christmas story as God comes among us in Jesus of Nazareth. This is the Incarnation. And then we have the Good Friday story (“God’s Friday”, our mediaeval foreparents called it) where Jesus renders that uttermost human obedience which you and I don’t render; renders that uttermost human obedience which turns out to be obedience even unto death.  And this human obedience unto death, thanks to the Incarnation, is God himself taking upon himself his own just judgement on sinners.  This is the atonement.

In the Incarnation and the atonement the covenant is fulfilled. Jesus Christ is the covenant-keeper. You and I, sinners, are covenant-breakers.  Then by faith we must cling to Jesus Christ our covenant-keeper.  As we cling to him in faith we are so tightly fused to him that when the Father looks upon the Son with whom he is ever pleased, the Father sees you and me included in the Son.  Covenant-breakers in ourselves, we are deemed covenant-keepers in Christ as by faith we cling to the covenant-keeper with whom we are now identified before God.  And this is our salvation.

Salvation is by grace alone, since God has graciously given his Son to be the covenant-keeper on our behalf. Salvation is by faith alone, since by faith we embrace the Son who has already embraced us. Salvation is on account of Christ alone, since Jesus Christ is both God’s mercy pressed upon us and representative human obedience offered to the Father.

To affirm that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone is to deny all forms of merit.

(i) It is to deny all forms of moral merit.  Our salvation doesn’t arise because we are morally superior to others and therefore have a claim before God which they haven’t.  Here we should recall the parable of the two men who go to the temple to pray (Luke 18), one a despicable creature as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, without a moral bone in his body; the other a paragon of virtue. The moral champion boasts before God of all his moral achievements, none of which is to be doubted. The creep, on the other hand, can only cry “God be merciful to me a sinner.”   Jesus tells us that it’s the latter fellow, the one with nothing to plead except God’s mercy – this man goes home “justified” says Jesus, where “justified” means “rightly related to God.

(ii) It is also to deny all forms of religious merit.  Our salvation doesn’t arise – neither is it aided – by religious observances of greater or less rigour or notoriety, as if God’s purpose were to render us hyper-religious.  (Hyper-religiosity ends in an illness that psychiatrists call homo religiosus.)

(iii) It is also to deny all forms of institutional merit.  Our salvation doesn’t occur because we have conformed to churchly edicts or traditions or prescriptions.

To affirm with the Reformers that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone is to recover essential truth that had gradually become silted over as century followed century.  “Nothing in my hand I bring” cries the hymn writer; “nothing – simply to thy cross I cling.”

When this gospel truth was declared and received people gloried in their new-found freedom.  They were freed from any and all forms of trying to placate God or curry favour with him or impress him or bribe him. They were freed from anxiously asking themselves “Have I done enough?   How will I ever know if I’ve done enough? Is my ‘enough’ good enough?” They gloried in the truth that in Jesus Christ God had done what needed to be done. Not only had God kept his covenant with humankind, in his Incarnate Son he had also kept humankind’s covenant with God. Now men and women needed only to own it in faith, thank him for it, glory in the relief it brought them and the release they could enjoy forever.  Their guilt, their anxiety, their guessing games, their insecurity – it was gone. They gloried in the freedom that God’s grace had brought them.

Either we uphold the priority of God’s grace in all his ways and works upon us and within us or we uphold a meritocracy of some sort, whether moral or religious or institutional.  In all meritocracies we think we have to earn God’s favour, only to be left assuming that we have earned it (and now are insufferably self-righteous); or we are left assuming that we haven’t earned it (and now are inconsolably despairing.)

Grace, mercy, peace (shalom).  The priority of grace means that God’s loving faithfulness will see his people through their disobedience, through their covenant-breaking. The priority of grace means that God has pledged himself to see his people saved by his free grace for the sake of their glorious freedom before him.

III: — The priority of grace, continued the Reformers, entails “the priesthood of all believers.”  Protestants have always been quick to speak of “the priesthood of all believers.”

I’ve been asked more than once, “If all believers constitute a priesthood, then what’s the meaning of ordination? Is there any place in the Protestant understanding for an ordained ministry?”  Plainly there is. Before we probe what’s meant by “the priesthood of all believers”, then, we should understand the place of ordained ministry.

The ordained minister doesn’t have powers, spiritual powers, that unordained Christians lack.  To be sure, I am the only person in this congregation who presides at Holy Communion. We must understand, however, that this is simply to maintain order.  It isn’t the case that I am the only person to preside because the sacrament will “work” if I administer it but it won’t work if a non-ordained person administered it.  Ultimately it is effective (i.e., it is a vehicle of Christ’s cementing himself ever more deeply into our lives) just because Christ has pledged to give himself afresh to us, unfailingly, every time Holy Communion is administered, regardless of who administers it. The ordained minister doesn’t have powers that others lack.

The ordained minister does have, however, a responsibility that others don’t have. Specifically, the ordained minister is essential to the church in that someone, by vocation, aptitude and study – someone has to ensure that the congregation’s understanding of Jesus Christ doesn’t drift away from that of the apostles.

The apostles are the normative witnesses to Jesus Christ. While Christ is different from James and John and Peter – that is, Christ is person in his own right and can never be reduced to the apostles –  hearing and obeying Christ himself always takes the form of hearing and obeying the witness of James and John and Peter. In other words, we honour Jesus Christ only by honouring the normative witnesses to him.  We receive him only insofar as we receive them.  It is the responsibility of the ordained minister to see to it that the congregation doesn’t drift from the apostolic understanding of our Lord, but rather in all aspects of individual faith and congregational life the congregation conforms to the apostolic pattern of believing upon Jesus and obeying him.

Make no mistake.  Left to itself – that is, in the absence of the ordained minister – a congregation will always drift.         First of all it drifts by retaining biblical words but filling them with non-biblical meanings. Drift is already underway, for instance, when the word “sin” is equated with immorality. (No one in this congregation is flagrantly immoral or criminal, yet everyone in this congregation is sinner through-and-through.)   Drift has occurred when the word “faith” is thought to mean “feeling optimistic in general.”   Drift has occurred when the word “God” comes to mean “there is a cosmic power in the universe that’s greater than any one of us or all of us put together.”

The next stage of drift is substituting the Reader’s Digest for scripture at worship; or the singing of such nonsense as “God is watching from a distance” instead of hymns that speak of the Holy One of Israel; or as it has been suggested to me, using juice and cookies at Holy Communion instead of bread and the cup.  Left to itself a congregation always drifts and will continue to drift until it has turned 180 degrees away from the gospel without knowing it.

Ordained ministry is essential to the church just because someone by vocation, aptitude, and study has to ensure that the congregation doesn’t drift away from what the apostle Jude calls “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.”

Then what is meant by the “the priesthood of all believers”?   In the Older Testament, priests are those engaged in the service of God, specifically in an intercessory service. “Priesthood of all believers” means that any Christian may engage in an intercessory service on behalf of his or her fellow-Christian.

Think of the matter of confession of sin.  In one of his treatises Luther maintained that there are several forms of confession. One is what we do here Sunday by Sunday: as part of public worship the minister gathers up the people’s confession of sin and voices it before God, even as in the name of Jesus Christ the minister pronounces absolution (pardon, forgiveness) for the people.   This is a public, liturgical form of confession.  Then, said Luther, there’s a private form.  Someone visits the clergyman, unburdens herself concerning the sin she can no longer deny, and awaits the pastor’s pronouncement of absolution or pardon. There’s one more form, says Luther: any Christian at all may hear a fellow-Christian’s confession of sin and pronounce absolution in the name of Christ.

We must be clear about this matter.  We are not dealing with psychotherapy, or at least not dealing with psychotherapy in the first instance.  We are dealing with something profounder than that, a spiritual matter of ultimate significance. The Reformers were convinced that since the Church is defined in terms of the people of God rather than in terms of clergy function or clergy hierarchy; since the Church is the people of God then the people of God can hear each other’s confession and pronounce God’s pardon in the name of Christ.

   This is not a devaluation of ordained ministry. It is rather the elevation of God’s people.

The mother who overhears her child’s prayers at night and who listens to her child’s tearful apology during the day is engaged in a priestly activity.  The board member who offers counsel to the fellow-board member too embarrassed to speak with the minister is engaged in a priestly service. Jean Vanier, the Canadian born to the aristocracy who has given himself to disadvantaged folk, especially men who are severely intellectually challenged; Vanier also spends much time visiting the impoverished, the sick, the confused, the forgotten geriatric patient in the back ward of a substandard facility. Vanier says that frequently he comes upon someone whose mental or bodily distress is overwhelming. All he can do, he tells us, is put his hand on the sufferer’s head (a scriptural sign of intercession) and say “Jesus.”   This too is priestly service.

Another dimension to “priesthood of all believers”: any Christian’s daily work, done in accordance with the command claim of God, done with integrity, done conscientiously, done so as to give full value for compensation received; any Christian’s daily work, done so as to please God, has the same spiritual significance as the work of clergyman, monk, or nun.

I wince whenever I hear it said of someone offering herself for ordained ministry, “She has decided to enter fulltime Christian service.” Full time? What about the homemaker? Is she engaged in part time service? Which part of the homemaker’s day is “Christian”?   God is honoured by the labourer who renders a day’s work for a day’s pay. God isn’t honoured by the clergyman who waits until the Saturday night hockey game is over before starting to think about what he’s going to say to his congregation next morning.

“Priesthood of all believers” means there are no higher callings and no lower callings.  There is no double standard of discipleship for ordained and non-ordained. There is only the integrity in the workplace that is to characterize whatever we do for a living. There is only the service we can render on behalf of a needy neighbour whose suffering is undeniable. There is only the word and truth, pardon and patience of Jesus Christ that all Christians are privileged to mirror to each other, since all of us are to be icons of our Lord to our fellow-believers.

The title of today’s sermon is Ecclesia Reformata ET Semper Reformanda Secundum Verbum Dei – the Church reformed and always being reformed in accordance with the Word of God, the gospel. The truth is, no church, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, can coast.  All churches, all denominations, all congregations become silted over with accretion after accretion that may look like the gospel but in fact has nothing to do with the gospel; silted over until the gospel is obscured – unless – unless such congregation or such denomination is constantly being reformed in accordance with the gospel.

                                                                                        Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                             

Reformation Sunday 2006

 Ecclesia Reformata et Semper Reformanda Secundum Verbum Dei

Luke 19:1-10

Everyone knows that fire attracts animals. The fire can be small, a family bonfire in a provincial park on a summer evening. The fire can be huge, like the fire at Woodbine Race Track that killed 28 horses two years ago. But whether large or small, fire attracts animals – even as the same fire keeps the animals at bay. There’s something about fire that irresistibly draws an animal, but only to a point; for fire simultaneously renders an animal apprehensive, even fearful.

I: — Many people react to Jesus Christ as an animal reacts to fire. Our Lord attracts people; they are drawn to him, and they do approach him. They want to move closer, but not too close for comfort. They are attracted to him at the same time that they are wary of him.

Zacchaeus was like this. He had heard much about Jesus, was intrigued by what he had heard and decided he had to check Jesus out for himself. He found a curious crowd in Jericho that was waiting for Jesus, and joined it. Now Luke tells us that Zacchaeus was a short man. Then why didn’t he stand at the front of the crowd if he wanted to see Jesus? Children stand at the front of a crowd. Zacchaeus was an adult, and no adult wants to be identified with children. Moreover, if he stood at the front of the crowd then all the adults taller than he, standing behind him, would be looking at him. He would feel their eyes boring holes in the back of his head. After all, no one liked Zacchaeus, and he knew it. He was a tax collector, commissioned by the hated Roman occupation. This alone was enough to make him resented. Worse, however, he defrauded people even as he collected money from them on behalf of the government. The last thing Zacchaeus wanted was to put himself on display in a crowd. Yes, he wanted to see Jesus, but he didn’t want to be seen seeing Jesus. And so he climbed a tree. The tree-perch was perfect. The tree-perch would let him see Jesus even as it protected him from the crowd. Even more important, the tree-perch would allow him to see Jesus without being seen by Jesus. He’d be close enough to “get a line” on the man from Nazareth , yet far enough away to be out of reach; close enough to see for himself, yet distant enough to be safe. Certainly he was curious; just as certainly he wasn’t committed. He wanted to assess Jesus for himself, but he didn’t want to be noticed – not by the crowd, not by Jesus. The tree-perch was perfect.

I’m convinced there are many people like Zacchaeus in that they surmise that Jesus just might have ever so much to do with life, but they aren’t sure. They want to assess the Nazarene but they don’t want to appear over-zealous. They want to know if he has anything to say to them or do for them, but at the same time they want to remain “cool.” And so they too “climb a tree,” as it were. They may slip into the back row of church minutes after the service has started and leave before they are pressed into the coffee hour. They may seek out a church large enough to guarantee them anonymity. They may even avoid coming to a church building at all, preferring to read about Jesus in half a dozen books in the hope that they can take note of him without being noticed by anyone, including him.

What do these people want? What are they looking for?

[1] I’m convinced they want a centre for life. They want a perspective from which they can see life whole. They want a standpoint from which they can see life integrated. They fear seeing life like a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces jumbled; worse, they fear having to piece life together themselves when some of the pieces to the puzzle might be missing.

At the same time as they seek a centre to life, however, they are nervous about religious eccentricity. They are suspicious of religious extremism. They’ve seen “religious” people “go overboard;” they’ve seen people “fished in” by religious “hype.” Even as there’s much they want to apprehend there’s also much that keeps them apprehensive. And so they find a tree of some sort that will get them close enough to Jesus to satisfy their curiosity but far enough away to keep them safe.

[2] I’m convinced too that such people are looking for resources. While they’d never be able to quote or find the verse which speaks of those who “have the form of religion but deny the power of it,” they perceive the distinction. “The power of it” is what they think they’re looking for; “the form of it” they shun like the plague. Simply put, they want help; they want help for getting through life.

As eager as they are to find help, however, they don’t want to appear desperate. They don’t even want to appear needy. They might not use the teenager’s expression, “no sweat,” yet they don’t want to appear driven. They want to save face, want to appear to be in control, want to appear intellectually inquisitive but never credulous.

[3] I’m convinced too that such people are looking for foundational certainties. They want to know that God is, God cares, God blesses. They want to prove for themselves not that God makes a difference to life (good digestion makes a difference.) They want to prove for themselves God makes the difference.

They want certainty. But they don’t want the artificial “certainty” of propaganda; they don’t want the certainty enjoyed by those who won’t think critically; they don’t want the certainty of those who try to quell their doubt by talking to themselves in a loud voice. (You must have heard the story of the minister who left his sermon notes in the pulpit.   On Monday morning the church custodian found them and began to read. He noticed, pencilled into the margin, the minister’s instruction to himself: “Pound pulpit here: argument weak.”) People want the certainty of inner persuasion, not the so-called certainty of outer authoritarianism. They know that if they can recognize truth when they come upon truth, they will have all the certainty they will ever need. And when it comes to truth, they suspect that Jesus is somehow linked to it. They want to come close enough to find out, yet remain distant enough to avoid being hassled.

Zacchaeus isn’t unusual at all. There are hordes like him. They find a tree and climb it. The tree lets them find out a few things for themselves at the same time that it spares them embarrassment at appearing needy.

II: — What happens to them next? What happened to Zacchaeus? Jesus stands at the foot of the tree, looks up at the little fellow and says, “What on earth are you doing up there? Come on down. I’m going to your house. We’re going to eat together.” If Jesus had said, “Get off that silly perch, you twit,” Zacchaeus would still be in the tree. Who doesn’t stiffen when told in such a manner as to be “told off?” Who doesn’t dig in his heels when he’s publicly humiliated? Only one thing brings Zacchaeus out of the tree: our Lord’s insistence that he’s going to the little man’s home; our Lord’s insistence that they’re going to share a meal.

In first-century Palestine eating with someone was the sign of intimacy, the sign of agenda-free friendship. To eat with someone meant that embraced that person without reservation; you cherished him without hesitation; you received him without qualification. To eat with someone meant that no ulterior motive was going to surface half way through the meal. To eat with someone meant that you were declaring amnesty, regardless of what hostility might have arisen previously. It was a declaration of pardon, of peace, of solidarity. The shared meal was the sign of exile ended, of rehabilitation begun, of elevation to honour, of dignity restored.

Only Christ’s limitless mercy, forgiveness, kindness; only his freely-bestowed pardon frees people from their defensiveness and induces them to give up their tree perch. Magnifying their shortcomings won’t do it. (This merely humiliates them.) Sending them on unnecessary guilt trips won’t do it. (This drives them either into self-righteous priggishness or into neurotic despair.)

We should notice that Zacchaeus’s reputation – so very bad it couldn’t be worse, and all of it deserved – Jesus doesn’t even mention. He knows that Zacchaeus has “fleeced” people for years, yet chooses to say nothing about it for now. Tree-perchers are never persuaded to abandon their roost through being harangued or threatened or browbeaten. They are never persuaded to give up the safety of their perch through being reminded, subtly or not so subtly, of the defects about them which they and others can see only too plainly. They abandon their perch only as they find in the approach of Jesus Christ something they never expected; namely, a pardon and a joy that melts their suspicion and lifts their head.

At the end of our Lord’s encounter with Zacchaeus Jesus exclaims, “Salvation has come to this house.” And so it has. Most people are rather vague about the meaning of “salvation.” It’s really quite simple. Salvation is simply a creaturely good, damaged and devastated by sin, restored at God’s hand. Ultimately salvation is the entire creation restored. As far as Zacchaeus is concerned, salvation is one particular creature restored: Zacchaeus.

Restored to what? Restored to whom? Through his encounter with Jesus Christ, Zacchaeus, created to be a child of God but now hissed at as a child of the devil, is restored to being a child of God. He’s restored to a place within a community that had detested him, and not without reason. He’s restored to himself, for prior to his encounter with Jesus Zacchaeus knew he was on the wrong side of everyone, including himself. Reconciled now to God, he’s reconciled as well to his community and also to himself. A multi-dimensional reconciliation like this adds up to restoration. “Salvation has come to this house.”

III: — How does Zacchaeus respond? He doesn’t say “Isn’t this grand!” and go on living with nothing changed. Instead, the grace that now surrounds him quickens gratitude in him. Zacchaeus exclaims to Jesus, “From now on I’m going to share everything I own with any needy person I find; and if I’ve cheated anyone, I’m ready to repay him four times over.” It was the big giveaway. All his life he’d been a greedy grabber; now he wants only to give. His turned-around outlook was the spontaneous outflowing of his delight in his new friend. He didn’t have to have his arm twisted. Jesus didn’t have to lean on him or coax him or pester him. With grace-quickened gratitude Zacchaeus gladly did what he knew a disciple should do.

When I was a youngster my mother would ask to me rake the leaves or shovel the snow or wash the windows. I would do it all right, but do it grudgingly. She would recognize my sullen resentment at being asked to do anything. Exasperated now she’d gasp, “I’m asking you to do only one little thing. Why do you have to look so hard done by?” Under my breath (always under my breath: my mother was formidable and still is) I’d mutter, “You wanted the leaves raked. You’re getting the leaves raked. What’s your objection?”

I didn’t understand her objection and her upset when I was thirteen. I do understand it now that I’m sixty. A claim upon us that we don’t meet cheerfully, gladly, is a claim upon us that we haven’t met at all. Haven’t all of us, at some point, asked someone to give us a hand with some small task only to find that he did it so very grudgingly that we wished we’d never asked him? Martin Luther never wearied of reminding us that an obedience which isn’t glad and joyful and eager is simply no obedience at all. When next we teach a Sunday School class, drive a patient on behalf of the Cancer Society, sit with someone whose problem seems slight to us but distressing to her, assist someone who, for now at least, can only receive while we can only give, or attend church meetings that are less than thrilling but without which there’d be no Christian presence in the community at all – on all such occasions we must re-own this truth.

When people hear the expression “the claim of Christ” (make no mistake: as long as we are going to call him “Lord” we have to acknowledge his claim) immediately they think “‘claim’: that means restraint, restriction, something that inhibits freedom and suppresses joy.” Not so. In gladly obeying our Lord who has given himself readily for us, we shall find, as Zacchaeus knew, not that our lives have shrivelled but rather that they’ve expanded; not that our Lord’s claim deprives us of our freedom, but rather that it guarantees us our freedom; not that we are being squeezed into a cramping mould that threatens to suffocate us, but that we are delivered from all the cramping moulds of social expectation and social conformity and social climbing. In a word, it’s the claim of Christ that frees us to recognize and reject all fraudulent claims. For all other claims are cramping and suffocating, not to say arbitrary and ridiculous. Just because the claim of Christ frees us from all other claims, and just because the claim of Christ is the obverse side of his mercy wherein he wants only to bless us, only the claim of Christ liberates.

When I say, with my Reformation foreparents, that unless the command of God or the claim of Christ is obeyed cheerfully and eagerly it isn’t obeyed at all; when I say this I’m not pretending for a minute that the Christian life is uninterrupted ecstasy. I’m not pretending that Christians are, or are supposed to be, jumping up and down at all times like a two year bouncing up and down in his jolly jumper. At the same time, I must insist that if we haven’t apprehended the privilege, the sheer privilege, of serving Jesus Christ in a world whose suffering never relents, then we are far from the kingdom. We remain far from the outlook and attitude of a little man who scampered out of a tree, went home to eat with Jesus, and gladly turned himself around. A reluctant or joyless obedience is no obedience at all.

So, who is up a tree this morning? Who not? How and why do we come down? What mood or attitude characterizes our obedience, eating with him who is both our companion in life and indeed the bread of life?

These questions are the questions we’ve endeavoured to answer today. Then may our re-hearing the old, old story of our Lord’s encounter with Zacchaeus, in the oldest city of the world ( Jericho ,) write indelibly these truths upon our minds and hearts.

                                                                                                        Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                 

June 2004

  Luke 22: 19            1 Corinthians 11:27 -29

        The fifth of the Ten Commandments tells us that we are to honour our father and mother in order that our days may be long in the land that the Lord our God gives us. Most immediately we are to honour our biological father and mother, those who begat us and bore us and gave us life, and whose wisdom, faithfulness and encouragement helped us past pitfalls when we were less than mature.

Lutheran Christians ever since Martin himself have believed that God intends a wider application of the fifth commandment.  Lutherans have always believed that “Honour your father and mother” also means “Honour all — however long dead — whose wisdom, faithfulness and encouragement now assist you, inspire you, make you wise; in short, honour all whose wisdom, faithfulness and encouragement continue to help you past pitfalls in your discipleship since your faith isn’t yet mature.” If our Lutheran friends are correct, then we obey the fifth commandment as we honour our foreparents in faith.

One such foreparent of all Christians is John Wesley.  He can help us past many pitfalls that surround us and concerning which we need help, since our faith is less than mature.  Today we are going to honour him by taking to heart his convictions concerning Holy Communion.

In 1787, when Wesley was 84 years old, he wrote a tract called, “The Duty of Constant Communion”.  His 1787 tract was a re-write of the tract he had penned 55 years earlier in 1732. “Five and fifty years ago”, he tells us in that English style which is archaic in the 21^st Century, “Five and fifty years ago the following discourse was written for the use of my pupils at Oxford … I then used more words than I do now.  But I thank God I have not yet seen cause to alter my sentiments in any point which is therein delivered.”   (He means that what he believed in 1732 he still believed in 1787.)

Immediately Wesley says that while he isn’t surprised at people who don’t fear God being indifferent to Holy Communion, he finds it incomprehensible that many who do fear God are infrequently found at the Lord’s table.         When he asked these people why they shied away from Holy Communion they quoted Paul’s word in 1^st Corinthians 11:27: “Whoever…eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.”   In Wesley’s era God-fearing people were absenting themselves from Holy Communion inasmuch as they regarded themselves unworthy and didn’t want to bring the judgement of God upon them.

It still happens. On the first communion Sunday of my first pastoral charge I stepped into the sanctuary to begin worship only to find that the congregation had segregated itself, some worshippers sitting on one side of the sanctuary, other worshippers on the other side.  I asked what this meant and was told that on communion Sundays the congregation divided itself into those deeming themselves worthy and those unworthy. I was appalled, and immediately had everyone sit together.  Whatever Paul meant by “eating and drinking unworthily” he didn’t mean that.

Let us be sure we understand something crucial.   God is free; God is sovereign; therefore God can meet us anywhere at any time in any manner through any means.  Nevertheless, he has promised that he will invariably meet – unfailingly meet us – through scripture, sermon and sacrament.  In other words, while we may be overtaken by God at any time by any means (surprised by God, that is) we know that we shall find God for sure, every time, at scripture, sermon and sacrament.  Therefore we must never absent ourselves from these.  When well-intentioned yet misguided people told Wesley they absented themselves from Holy Communion lest they endanger themselves through partaking “unworthily”, he told them they were endangering themselves far more by not partaking at all.         And then he told them why they were at spiritual risk for not partaking at all.

I: — In the first place, Wesley reminded them, it is the Lord’s command that we come to his table.  “Do this in remembrance of me.   Do it.”   It’s an imperative, not a suggestion.  Jesus Christ commands us to come to his table.         It is therefore the obligation of everyone who believes in him to obey him and come. Not to come is simply to defy and disdain the one we call “Lord”.   But to call Christ “Lord” is to obey him, at least to want to obey him, to be eager to obey him. How can we call upon him as Lord, admit that he who is Lord is also our Justifier, yet continue to regard ourselves as unworthy?   More to the point, he hasn’t commanded us to come if first we deem ourselves worthy; he has simply commanded us to come.

Then Wesley adds a footnote.   On the eve of his death Jesus told his followers that he wouldn’t call them servants, since a servant merely obeys without being admitted intimately to the mind and heart of the servant’s master. Rather because he himself, continued Jesus, because he has drawn his followers most intimately into his mind and heart he calls them servants no longer but friends. (John 15:15) “Now”, says Wesley, “if our Lord draws us so intimately into his mind and heart as to call us friends, surely we can’t turn down his final request. What friend turns down his dying friend’s final request?”

There is another point, not made by Wesley, yet too important for us not to mention. In the ancient world the word “friend” was rich with several meanings.  In Israel “friend” had a special meaning; it meant “best man” at a wedding. In Rome “friend” had a special meaning too; it meant “someone intensely loyal to Caesar”. No one can imagine the best man at a wedding failing to do what the bridegroom has asked him to do. No one can imagine a Roman soldier publicly declaring his utmost loyalty to Caesar and then publicly refusing to do what Caesar asks of him.

“Absent ourselves from Holy Communion, for any reason?” Wesley asks; “Don’t we know what the word ‘friend’ means?”

II: — In the second place, says Wesley, Holy Communion is more than just God’s command; it is also God’s provision for our spiritual need.  To be sure, Christians are sinners who have come to faith and repentance through the incursion of God’s Spirit.  Yes, we have passed from death to life, from darkness to light, from bondage to freedom, from guilt to acquittal, from shame to glory.  Nevertheless, sin still dogs us.  Our glory isn’t without some tarnish; our freedom isn’t without niggling habituation. Yes, we live in the light of him who is light; still, that darkness which our Lord has overcome hasn’t yet been wholly overcome in us.  Or as Martin Luther used to say, “In putting on Christ in faith we have also put on the new man (woman); the old man is therefore put to death; but the stinker doesn’t die quietly.”   In other words, however strong our faith, in fact it is weak.  However mature our discipleship, we have not yet graduated.  However resilient we think we are in the company of our Lord, we are yet frail and fragile and faltering.   Therefore we can’t afford to pass up any provision God has made for us in our need of greater deliverance.         For this reason Wesley speaks of Holy Communion as “a mercy of God to man.” Quoting Psalm 145:9 (“God’s mercy is over all his works”) Wesley reminds us that however God deals with us — whether gently or roughly, whether starkly or subtly, whether suddenly or slowly — whatever God does to us and with us he does ultimately just because he is for us.  Therefore everything God does to us and with us is finally an expression of God’s mercy. In light of this, who is so foolish as to absent herself from the most dramatic representation of that mercy, Holy Communion?

Wesley never hesitated to be blunt.  Because partaking of the Lord’s Supper is a command of God, he said, to spurn it is to announce that we have no piety; and because partaking of the Lord’s Supper is a mercy of God, to spurn it is to announce that we have no wisdom. Piety, Wesley had learned from John Calvin, is the love of God and the fear of God. To be without piety is therefore ultimately to be insensitive to God.  To be without wisdom is simply to be fools.

Fools? Yes, says Wesley as he develops a theme that runs like a thread through all his writings. The theme is this: none but the holy are finally happy.  He insists tirelessly that God has fashioned us for happiness.  Not for superficial jollity or frivolity or sentimentality, but certainly for deep-down contentment, joy, happiness.  Let’s not forget that the Greek word MAKARIOS, rendered “blessed” in most English translations of the beatitudes (“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled”, etc.); the Greek word MAKARIOS also means “happy” (in both ancient Greek and modern Greek).  Of course. How could we ever be blessed — by God himself — and finally be miserable?

To be sure, there is no end to the pleasure we can find in nature; no end to the pleasure we can find in culture; no end to the pleasure we can find in our own bodiliness and our intellectual life.  Nonetheless, there is one delight that all of this can’t give us: our “enjoyment” of God, in Wesley’s words.  Wesley insists there is one throbbing pleasure that God’s children know and unbelievers can’t know: “delight in God”.

Now, says the indefatigable man himself, only as we are holy are we profoundly happy. Yet we can’t render ourselves holy. Holy Communion is one of God’s provisions to render us holy.  To absent ourselves from it is to cut ourselves off from that blessedness which is our greatest happiness.

III: — In Wesley’s day (the 1700s) as in our day people put forward a variety of reasons as to why they don’t or even shouldn’t come to the Lord’s Supper. We need not suspect these people of insincerity; the reasons they put forward aren’t excuses offered lamely. Those who absent themselves from the Lord’s Supper are sincere, says Wesley — and they are sincerely wrong.

One reason put forward. “I have sinned, and therefore I am not fit to communicate.”   Wesley said this was nothing short of ridiculous, however well intentioned. While sin is a violation of the command of God, we don’t atone for violating the command of God by violating another command (to communicate).  Nobody atones for the sin of theft by committing the sin of murder. If we have sinned (better, since we sin) there is all the more reason for betaking ourselves to Holy Communion where we shall find — for sure — in the words of Wesley, “the forgiveness of our past sins” and “the present strengthening and refreshing of our souls.”

Another reason put forward for not attending Holy Communion.   “I can’t live up to the promise made in the communion service to remain Christ’s true follower.”   Wesley agrees: none of us can live up to the promise.  At the same time, he tells us, none of us lives up to any of the promises we make anywhere in life. But this is no excuse for not making a promise.  Do we refuse to get married (with the promise marriage entails) on the grounds that we are never going to be the perfect spouse?

Another reason put forward. “Frequent partaking of the Lord’s Supper will diminish our reverence for the sacrament.” “What if it did?” says Wesley; “Would this render null and void the command of God?” Needless to say, it is Wesley’s conviction that frequent communion, so far from diminishing our reverence for the sacrament, will only increase it.

Another reason advanced for not coming to the Lord’s Table.  “I have come so very many times already, and I don’t feel I have benefited in any way.” Here Wesley replies in two instalments. In the first place, the issue that can’t be dodged, he repeats yet again, is the command of God. God insists that we honour him and his will for us by bringing ourselves and whatever faith we have to that table where we can meet him for sure.  In the second place, we have benefited from regular attendance at the Lord’s Supper regardless of how much or how little we may feel.         Even when we feel nothing, says Wesley, we are being “strengthened, made more fit for the service of God, and more constant in it.” What’s more, he continues, not only have we benefited where we feel we haven’t, but also the day comes when feeling catches up to fact; what has been real in our hearts, albeit hidden in our hearts, is now manifested within our hearts so as to leave us without complaint concerning feeling.

The most telling objection to frequent communion came from those who trembled before Paul’s word in 1^st Corinthians 11.   “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.” What is the unworthiness that Paul has in mind?   It isn’t an extraordinary, inner, personal unworthiness.   Then what is it? The clue to it is given two verses later.   “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body – i.e., the body of Christ, the congregation – eats and drinks judgement upon himself.” We must recall the situation in Corinth . The congregation there was a mess. Party-factions were fragmenting the congregation. One man was involved in open incest and no one seemed to care.  Parishioners preferred religious “glitz” to spiritual profundity. Boasting had supplanted cross-bearing. Within the congregation there flourished bitterness, lovelessness, self-exaltation, superficiality and sleaze.  Paul said it had to end. The Corinthians had lost sight of the fact that the congregation is Christ’s body. Currently the body in Corinth appeared hideous. Anyone who came to the Lord’s Supper without discerning this, said Paul, was in a sorry state herself.

In other words, when we come to Holy Communion we must understand that because the congregation is Christ’s body, we must be determined to ensure that it exhibits itself as Christ’s body, lest the watching world pour contempt upon him who is the head of the body, Christ Jesus himself. To eat and drink worthily is simply to come to the Lord’s Supper determined to live together as a congregation so as to bring honour to the congregation’s Lord. Therefore let all who have resolved to do this never absent themselves from the service.

It is only fitting that we let John Wesley himself have the last word. When he has finished telling us why we must come to Holy Communion, and come constantly; when he has finished replying to the well-intentioned but groundless reasons that people advance for not coming, he then concludes his tract, “If any who have hitherto neglected [Holy Communion] on any of these pretences will lay these things to heart, they will, by the grace of God, come to a better mind, and never more forsake their own mercies.”

                                                                                                        Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                      

May 2007

This paper first appeared in Theological Digest & Outlook (Burlington) in January of 1995.